Final Scores

[TheCipherCrackers]

Hi Harry,

We’re guessing you’re still in the midst of working this all out so perhaps we are jumping the gun here but we don’t think we’ve ever seen our (or anyone else’s) current/final points tally. We’re curious as to whether that is intentionally the case or if at the end of the challenge the final points totals for each participant are published? We’d love to see how we compared to the top teams and have a score to try and better next year!

Thanks again, we’re looking forward to the next one already!

We publish rankings rather than scores, with the winners separated out on the leaderboard for clarity, so you should get some idea of how you did from that. Harry

[eel-eel]

As there are around 200 places for Bletchley, do all members of a team count as separate places? I did the challenge solo and I found the challenge rather hard so I didn’t score as many points on 10B as I had hoped because it was immaculately crafted to be an absolute gauntlet. Basically, I’m trying to see what my odds look like for earning a medal and cool day out. Thank you!

We will be taking a look at exactly that question over the next few days! Stay tuned. Harry

[The_Bombe]

When will the 10A and 10B leaderboards be published?

Once we have contacted all our winners and sorted out who to invite to Bletchley Park. That will be on 20th January we hope, though sometimes it takes a little longer! Harry

[The_Bombe]

Are Harry and Jodie your real names?

Would you expect us to publish our real names given what we do for a living? Or are we bluffing? Harry

[Mrs-Robot]

IF Harry and Jodie are pseudonyms, would it be like a mantle, where after a few years someone else inherits the name?

There is only one Harry! Harry

[_madness_]

On the other hand, no one knows if madness even exists.

[The_Bombe]

If two groups get the same number of points for challenges 4-10, do 1-3 make a difference? Also, if they get the same number of points, does it matter who submitted earlier, even if the points are the same, for A or B? Also, are rankings for A decided on the same point deadlines as B?

We invite the top scoring teams to submit an account of how they cracked Challenge 10B and then choose the winners using those accounts together with scores. Harry

[TheCipherCrackers]

Hi Harry,

Perhaps alongside the final placings some summary statistics on the scores would help us be able to get a better idea of how we did versus others (but more importantly, for us at least, to compare against for future years)? I’ve assumed the system for assigning scores stays the same each year.

Open to your thoughts but I was thinking things like:
Winning score, percentiles, percentage of participants that completed each challenge (perhaps grouped by each applicable deadline), boundary for prizes / invitation to Bletchley (the last two would obviously change year to year and maybe you’d rather omit these).

I’m assuming avoiding publishing the actual scores prevents any squabbles about relative placings, which are very understandably more subjective, and maybe the summary stats would still achieve this aim whilst giving participants a little more information to benchmark against.

Thanks for posting, we love the ambition! The rankings are all we publish and contain most of the info you need, though it does take a bit of work to extract it from individual challenge leaderboards. As you say, there is an element of subjectivity to the final selection of prize winners and the Prize Committee deliberations are private, so we can’t really give more details. As for Bletchley, tickets have been offered on all the following bases over the years, so we can’t really compare them!: Lottery; First Come First Served; Invitation; Competition Performance. Harry

 

[The_Bombe]

So does the quality of the account matter? And how are rankings for A decided?

Rankings for Part A are purely based on points awarded for accuracy. Part A rankings are not used in the award of prizes When assessing the accounts we are looking for ingenuity, insight, cunning and technical skill. There is no clear ordering of these and different solutions often focus on different aspects. Someone might crack the challenge quickly by writing their own software, where someone else might have a flash of insight that gets them to the solution as fast or faster. There are always more participants worthy of a prize than prizes available and the prize committee has the unenviable task of weighing these factors to decide on the awards! Harry

[frazza238]

Does the new from today about winners having been contacted include silver medalists or just gold?

We sent a message inviting all 200 silver medallists and the 4 gold medal teams to Bletchley. We have contacted the winners of the Turing, Ada Lovelace, Hut 8, Hutt 33 and the four Northrop Grumman prizes (and their schools) separately by email, and have heard back from them all! Congratulations to everyone who received an invite, we hope you can make it, it promises to be a great day! If we have any additional tickets we will let you all know, so keep an eye on the site for news! Harry

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