Perhaps it’s some mysterious side-effect of the Da Vinci Code, but it seems that all of a sudden cipher challenges have become cool again (if they were ever cool before). I did a quick trawl of the Net and came up with this quicky little list, mostly from 2008:-
- Pretty as a picture is the MicroArray $1500 challenge, courtesy of Dr. Peter C. Johnson.
- Andrew Fergus has posted his own supposedly unbreakable cipher: this appears to uses a small key to seed a PRNG (pseudo-random number generator) which then presumably noisifies the signal (add? xor? etc) to the point of unreadability. Not sure if he’s totally wise to Kerckhoff’s maxim, though.
- Another little cipher challenge here, courtesy of Emmanouel Kellinis (2005).
- Refined Site Games have a members-only cipher challenge here (2008-2009, not sure if it’s running yet).
- Holy Trinity Westcott (a church near Dorking in Surrey) put up its own “Festive Season Cipher Challenge” last November, which I somehow doubt is based on The Bible Code! 🙂
- GCHQ posted up a little cipher challenge in 2008, as had the FBI in 2007 and 2008. Here’s a blog entry showing how stupendously easy the latter is to crack.
And so on: please don’t email me any others, this list should be plenty for most people!
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im not sure how ive ended up on this forum but to make amends i giveyou an answer to the Beale treasure code,the keys are in the code itself in fact they are in the preceeding numbers you just add up the digits then double or treble them add a number that is common to a few words,examples are 71 added is 8 plus 7 equals fifteen which is O in the alphabet, 194 is 14 +7=21=U, 38=11 +7=18=R,carry on and you get,OUR PXT IRYST,THE X and I can be had by adding the whole code number to their added number =89+17+7=113,=I 11+2+7=20=T
THIS KEY GIVES OTHER SENTENCES LATER IN THE CODE,DOUBLING AND TREBLING THE ADDED CODE DIGITS GIVES ME SENTEDCES LIKE IN THE COUNTY OF BEDFORD JOINTLY OWNED, ON THE BALCONY TWO TON TEAM ,AND A FEW ODD WORDS I WISH SOMEONE WILL HELP AND APPLY MY METHODS TO THE WHOLE CODE I AM WILLING TO GIVE THEM THE NAME OF THE PLOT AND GRAVE NAME BUT I DONT KNOW THE CEMETRY IM 76 AND COULD POP MY CLOGS ANYTIME AND IT WOULD BE A SHAME NEVER TO SEE THE COMPLETE CODE SOLVED STAN CLAYTON