Codebreaker II – Prepare for despair

Come on then if you think you're hard enough

By Lester Haines, 3rd May 2001

Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything

It's been several months since our original Codebreaker competition reduced hundreds of our readers to tears of frustration and despair.

We enjoyed the thing so much - as did many of you, judging by the correspondence - that we're giving crypto-boffins a second bite of the apple.

All you have to do is decode the following text:

TQHYP WQZYP RYCCA YFRAB SGOTK UUSKY KAVQK WNUKQ ZUQJB HHGDE RTVYJ TITVQ QIAMU FNZGR OWDUQ PIOAN KBVZV ESFLU GPRGD GAZFG LHXPT UEQPX JDERH YABXJ VLYNG RCEHQ AUKGY AGSRI RWJRA FWHEZ QNAGX LESQX JPRWT WYFWS HSCAA VOCWZ RYYGN IWOEZ QXOVL OAOFI JSRWG PBEAJ NAFYU GITZO UINEM CQNFX BTOEF UXIWB LPLHD HEGIR DVHSV VTJDY GLYGR SGHZN VXTHY JXYZW ELKFW RCAJH NVEAQ BNIYP LPUTQ FWUPI DLMXY JWQLU WPINZ CMUCT STATG QXBGS RLHTT UQLDD QTIFU KOZXK HBKRC ZAOHC WTVCX NULNC ICTBL YBTET RXJQW RONKU WBOEQ OSFLY QBIEY VRLVB UCUBK CFSSK JKILF LCGPU MKIAW DINAT SEVSY FDUXR GHSCE EQOQM OTJMX AHDBG IVHPV RWNIX MFDFJ HGPZU KFTHH PGNZM CZXAQ SLPMG ZORIO GXCFE RHUFI OYRFY HMSQV AUYXT DPQVT YNBBR XRYIS MGPCD VKKUJ MJCDZ AAIZC P

Simple, eh? And what will you get for your hours of blood, sweat and tears? Well, we know you do it for the pure intellectual pleasure, but we've managed to secure ten copies of Sarah Flannery's In Code: A Mathematical Journey.

The book is an insight into the author's achievements in public key encryption. When she was 16, Sarah won the 1999 Irish Young Scientist of the Year award with her "Cayley-Purser algorithm", an innovative, speedy and secure system of encoding data on the Internet.

One bit of the book tells how she nearly dissed Prof Ron Rivest at MIT, one of the co-inventors of the RSA encryption algorithm. She almost didn't take his call assuming it was one of many journos she'd had to chat to who couldn't even spell algorithm.

Thanks to publishers Profile Books for the goodies. The books go to the senders of the first ten correct entries.

The sender of the first correct entry will also receive a couple of tickets for Bletchley Park, home of Station X and birthplace of the modern computer (but you'll have to fund your own trip to Bletchley itself). And if that isn't enough, we'll throw in some top-notch Reg merchandising, including our exclusive "Show us the Money" t-shirt.

The rules are, as ever, simple:

The decoded text must exactly match our copy of the original text
The closing date is 5.00pm GMT on Friday 25th May
All e-mails begging for clues/help/the solution will be binned or sent to the Vulture Central Mailbag for public ridicule
Email your entries to us here

Good luck - you'll need it! ®