I’ve been meaning to write about how I got into codebreaking, so here’s the start of a small series on maths, ciphers, and curiosity.
A lot of experiences have shaped the curious, questioning person I am today, but I wasn’t always like this.
Looking back, one of the biggest turning points came in Year 10, when I decided to take part in the National Cipher Challenge, thanks to a recommendation from my maths teacher’s friend.
I first registered1 in late December of 2021, slightly too late to attempt most of the missions. I’d never done any cryptography before, and Mission 10 was all I had to go on. I didn’t know what to expect, but what started as a last-minute registration turned into one of the most meaningful experiences of my school life.
What followed wasn’t just codebreaking, it was curiosity, connection, and a kind of joy I kept chasing year after year.
That Christmas and New Year, I spent hours working that one challenge, trying everything, reading every hint, refreshing the forums like my life depended on it. I’d never done much with ciphers before, but I fell in love with every part of it:
• The immersive storyline2 (and the fact that even if you don’t solve everything, you still get to follow along as the decrypted messages are released at the end of each challenge deadline)
• The huge range of helpful resources on the website
• The brilliant chaos of the forums, especially when Harry and the Elves dropped a much-needed hint!
The exhilaration of cracking the columnar transposition cipher in 10A3 the night before the final deadline, armed with nothing but a pen, paper, and an Excel spreadsheet, remains one of my all-time favourite memories. It wasn’t just about solving the challenge. It was about the entire process: the frustration, the breakthroughs, the quiet joy of chasing something difficult and not giving up. That feeling meant everything to me.
It would be amiss not to mention everything else the cipher challenge gave me, because it’s given me far more than just cryptography skills.
Some of my fondest memories are from the prizegiving events at Bletchley Park: attending talks, chatting to other students and teachers, and just being around people who were as excited about codebreaking as I was. And every year, I had the joy of working alongside friends4 who shared that same enthusiasm which created an environment where I saw my confidence grow not just in codebreaking, but in problem-solving, pattern-spotting, and thinking independently. Whether it was optimising the hill climb parameters for various programs, or spotting a silly inequality error5 in an evaluation block, the shared teamwork made even the most daunting ciphers feel achievable.
I know for a fact that I will keep returning to the Cipher Challenge year after year, all for one simple reason:
To recapture the thrill I felt as that pioneering Year 10 version of myself— poring over a ciphertext with no idea what I was doing, and loving every second of it. This challenge helped keep my curiosity alive, especially during times when school made maths and problem-solving feel more like a chore than a joy.
If you’re a student wondering whether it’s worth trying, or a teacher considering whether to recommend it to your class: please do.6 It’s not just a competition. It’s a spark, and in my case, has stayed lit for years.
Special thanks to Harry7 for encouraging me to write this post!
- Registration typically opens early/mid September with practice rounds being published in early October ↩︎
- The challenge usually follows the adventures of Harry and Jodie who are thrown into a world of secret missions and plot twists. The narrative builds with each mission. Even if you don’t crack a cipher within the time frame, you still get to see how the story unfolds, which honestly makes you want to solve the next one even more! ↩︎
- Each challenge has a Part A and Part B, with A being generally easier and often providing hints for B ↩︎
- Part of which included debating increasingly ridiculous team names before settling on “Ctrl+Alt+ELITE” ↩︎
- Little secret – once I spent ages trying to debug a program, only to realise I was comparing my evaluation score to the wrong value ↩︎
- It’s also a really fun after school activity if you want to keep yourself/your students engaged with something as each new challenge is realised 3pm on a Thursday afternoon ↩︎
- Not to be confused with the one from Hogwarts – although this one does sometimes work magic with cryptic hints. If you don’t already know him, you’ll meet him when you sign up! ↩︎
Maths Rant 