A Christmas crypto challenge from the GCHQ
GCHQ has published a cryptologic Christmas puzzle. Can a reader solve it?
Back in early 2016, I blogged about a Christmas puzzle published by the British security and intelligence agency GCHQ.
The GCHQ
At that time, chess pieces played an important role, and the matter was probably quite difficult.
Quelle/Source: GCHQ
GCHQ is the British equivalent of the U.S. NSA. Its headquarters in Cheltenham in the southwest of England certainly bears comparison with its role model.
Quelle/Source: Wikimedia Commons
By the way, right next to this building known as the “Donut” are Gordon Young’s Listening Stones.
Quelle/Source: Schmeh
Zwei dieser neun Skulpturen tragen eine verschlüsselte Inschrift. Selbstverständlich ist dieser Ort in meinem (mit Christian Baumann entwickelten) Cryptologic Travel Guide gelistet.
Christmas challenge 2020
Blog reader Jan Stauffacher thankfully pointed out to me that GCHQ published another Christmas puzzle a few days ago. For copyright reasons, I can only present a pixelated version here:
Quelle/Source: GCHQ
Here it goes to the original.
As you can see, there are nine groups of letters at the bottom of the sheet. The group at the bottom right can be interpreted as the Roman numeral 1665, the others make no discernible sense.
Above is a labyrinth (mathematically speaking: a graph) with nine rooms (mathematically speaking: nodes).
Quelle/Source: GCHQ
There is (at least) one path that contains all connecting passages exactly once in the direction of the arrow and then arrives back at the initial space. This is called an Euler circle in mathematics. The start/finish space is not fixed, as far as I can see. So you can start anywhere and get back there at the end.
The nine groups of letters at the bottom of the sheet are arranged like the nine spaces at the top. I therefore assume that each group is assigned to a room. Probably you have to follow the Euler circle from one group of letters to the next, selecting one letter at a time.
This is as far as I have got so far. Can any reader find the solution to this puzzle?
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Further reading: Vom Teddybär bis zum Weihnachtsbaum-Anhänger: die schönsten Merchandising-Produkte der NSA
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