Welcome

[Harry]

Welcome to the Forum for the 23rd National Cipher Challenge, The mYstery of the Silver Bullet.

This is a great (and safe) place to give us feedback, to ask questions, to support one another and to spend some time getting to know the others taking part. To keep it that way we have a few simple rules:

Be friendly
Keep on topic (start a new thread if you want to veer off in a new direction)
Don’t publish anything which you could be embarrassed about later
Don’t publish anything which gives away your identity

If you are unsure about anything or there is anything we can help with that you don’t want to make public, then email us at [email protected]. We are always pleased to hear from you.

[pupko0]

hello, first time participant by the way, i just wanted to say the whole competition is a really cool concept and i look forward to participating. i was just curious, in the main competition are frequency analysers allowed as they save time? its cool if not i just wasn’t certain.

Welcome – hope you enjoy it! We provide a few tools here on the website (finding them is the first challenge) and you are free to use them. Anything not on our tools page you have to build yourself if you want to be eligible for a prize. If you can already code this is an interesting exercise, and if you can’t then you can either learn or use a combination of text editors and spreadsheets to build your own tools. There is some info about how to do that in our Library. Harry

[DJJJJ]

Hi, I know this sounds like an obvious question, but is the code on the silver bullet a key to starting the challenge, or coming to the conclusion? Many thanks, DJJJJ

[kman_on_top]

I think it should be obvious as the competition progresses, I don’t want to spoil it but best of luck otherwise.

[Divji123]

I think that the silver bullet could be very important later on in the challenge. If you read what it says next to the diagram it says it is the key to a door. So keep an eye on on upcoming case files or any doors we need to unlock. Best of luck […] 🙂

 

Sorry I deleted your signature, but best not to give away too much in this game! Harry

[RL0R_G1RL]

Is the capital ‘Y’ in mystery a clue? Just wondering.

-R

[RL0R_G1RL]

Are you allowed to import things like permutation from itertools for Python coding?
I haven’t used itertools, but I wanted to know if I could.

Thanks,
-R

There is definitely a grey area in using libraries rather than writing your own, but with general purpose functions like this it is reasonable to import them. That wouldn’t be the case with existing cipher tools. When we adjudicate the winners we take account of how much originality the solution shows, so there is some credit for original contributions in code where it is used, as well as ingenuity. Hope that helps, Harry

[SpectacledBear1]

Hey! After solving the key for challenge 3 part B, I am finding it very tedious to have to apply this to every six block chunk and type it out. Is there a quicker way around this?
Thanks so much,
8bears

Good question! It is possible to write some python code to do this (one of our competitors learned enough python to do this on Thursday evening!) or you can use a text editor or a spreadsheet to help rearrange blocks. I will leave you to think about how, but maybe say more another time! Harry

[Mrs-Robot]

Are all the Challenges predetermined, or do you make them up week by week as you go along?

I’m afraid the workings of the Cipher Challenge are classified Top Secret STRAP3B. Sorry I can’t help, Harry

[Author]

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