We’re celebrating the life, work and legacy of mathematician Alan Turing this week on Wired.co.uk, and part of that legacy is inspiring people to work in cryptography and codebreaking — so we’ve partnered with the Cyber Security Challenge UK to set you a challenge.
Turing’s career spanned both science and technology, but it was his work in deciphering the German Enigma code that Churchill called the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the Second World War.
So in honour of that work, we’d like you to crack the code above. Click here for a bigger version. It was developed by coding experts Jay Abbott and Senad Zukic from PwC on behalf of the Cyber Security Challenge UK, a cabinet-office-backed series of competitions to raise awareness of cyber-learning opportunities and careers.
Solving the cipher will reveal a hidden message with a win code — please email both of these to the secret address concealed within the cipher. The winner will be the first person to email through the correct answer. They will receive a year’s subscription to Wired magazine and an official Cyber Security Challenge UK t-shirt.
Oh, and we think it’s much more fun for everyone if each participant has the same opportunity to complete the cipher. So we’d politely ask that if you think you’ve solved it, then you keep the answer and the method you’ve used to yourself until the Challenge team has announced the winner.
Read more: Celebrating Alan Turing’s centenary