Congratulations to: Matthew A (mca1..)
who was the first person with the right answer to Challenge #1
Also congratulations to: ‘Al’ G (tag1…), Clare L and friends (cl27…), Anna A (ama1…), Steve HP (shp1..), Tom O (to1…), Owen S (os1…), Peter L (pjcl1..), Paul T (pjt2…) and Rachel G (rng1…)
all of whom provided at the correct answer with a suitable explanation.
A mention also to Andy D (ad10…) who came so close but sadly missed out the all-important explanation. Don’t forget!
For the rest of you that didn’t make the cut:
You needed to begin at the very beginning – the top of the Challenges page – where you would have seen the text “Gur rairybcr vf oruvaq gur ybbfr oevpx!”. This shows an example of a substitution cipher in use, in this case a simple alphabetic shift (Caesar cipher). One of you gave us the wrong shift size (saying 14 instead of 13), but we let you have it anyway. It’s a 13-character Caesar shift, which in computing terms is also often known as “ROT13”. ROT13 used to be a favourite on internet newsgroups to hide information from casual browsing, although its cryptographic strength is practically nil.
Well done to everyone who got it right!
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