It doesn’t seem possible that this is the 25th National Cipher Challenge, but it is, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with you. Whether you are an old hand at this or are joining us for the first time you are very welcome and we hope you enjoy it.

This year we will be exploring the curious adventure of Sarah and her friends and colleagues as they try to solve The Mystery of the Missing Silver. You will need patience and cunning to crack the ciphers and help them to unwrap the layers and solve the riddles pointing to the solution, but we will try to help and think you will have fun doing that, and you might even learn something along the way.

We have £6,000 in prizes to award this year, and everyone who takes part will be able to download certificates to record their achievements for all time. Our top codebreakers will be awarded Gold and Silver medals at our Prizegiving at Bletchley Park on March 10th, and, as always we are really looking forward to meeting you there.

You can follow your progress on the leaderboards, and this year, as part of our celebrations, we have added some filters so you can compete against other teams in your school, and your region. For the first time we are also providing an Alumni & Teachers leaderboard for those who want to take part but do not qualify for prizes. Just for fun we are also introducing a Leaderboard to rank schools by participation, so get out there and recruit all your friends and teachers to this year’s challenge**. You never know, there might be a prize for that too in March!

If you have any questions please head over to the Forum to post them there*, or send us an email at Harry, Jodie and the Elves and we will get back to you. You might have to be patient because there are not many of us here at BOSS HQ and there are a LOT** of you out there, but we try to reply to every message within a couple of days.

Harry, Jodie and the Elves

*Actually, until registration opens on September 24th you won’t be able to post on the forum, sorry! Please do feel free to email us with any questions or comments in the meantime.

** Last year we had over 9930 people registered for the Challenge. Could we maybe get to 10,000 this year?