Alan Turing Cryptography Competition
Now in its ninth year, the online competition is open to secondary school children up to Year 11 (England and Wales), S4 (Scotland) and Year 12 (Northern Ireland). Run by the Department of Mathematics at The University of Manchester, it is a great way for children to develop their mathematical and problem-solving skills while having fun. The competition will begin in January 2020.And the best bit? There are lots of opportunities to win some great prizes, which have been sponsored by the flight search company Skyscanner. Skyscanner was set up by two former computer scientists from The University of Manchester – two people who directly benefitted from Turing’s contributions to Manchester and computing.

The competition follows the story of two young cipher sleuths, Mike and Ellie, as they get caught up in a cryptographic adventure ‘The Tale of the Bouncing Bombe’. New chapters of the story will be released every 1-2 weeks, each with a cryptographic code to solve. There are six chapters in total (plus an epilogue). Points can be earned by cracking each code and submitting the answers. The team that solves each chapter the fastest will win a prize, and there will also be a number of spot prizes chosen at random from all the correct entries.

At the end of the competition, the University will host the Alan Turing Cryptography Day at the end of April 2020. You will be able to register for this event from Saturday 1st February 2020. We anticipate plenty of code-breaking action, from a live cryptography challenge to a prize ceremony for the competition winners. It’s not to be missed!

For more details, including how to register, please visit:
https://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/cryptography_competition/

Mathsbombe Competition
MathsBombe is an online competition aimed at students up to Year 13 (England and Scotland), S6 (Scotland), Year 14 (Northern Ireland). Every fortnight a new mathematical puzzle set will be released. There are prizes for the first team to submit the correct answer for each puzzle, as well as “spot-prizes” for three teams drawn at random from all the correct solutions every fortnight. The puzzles will be quirky, fun and cover the full spectrum of Mathematics; they will not be directly related to the A-Level syllabus and will be unlike problems in, say, the UKMT. Instead students will need to use their problem-solving skills and be able to ‘think outside the box’ – valuable skills for students going on to study STEM subjects at university. The competition is supported by the Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Trust.

For more details, including how to register, please visit: https://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/mathsbombe/

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at: cryptography_competition@manchester.ac.uk