Students at a Lichfield school have been demonstrating their mathematical skills in a national code-breaking competition.
Nether Stowe School Year 13 students James Hyde, Scott Innerd, Euan McKenzie and Louise Westoby are participating in the National Cipher Challenge, an annual online competition run by the University of Southampton, which requires students to break ciphers, or codes, to find hidden messages.
Maths teacher, Stuart McAusland explained: “There are eight challenges across the autumn term, each split into two parts – A and B. Part A is not easy, but part B is a real test of the students’ skill, intuition and patience. Solutions are submitted online and are rated by the speed and accuracy of the response.”
The Nether Stowe team, who call themselves We Love Pi, has completed the first seven challenges in the highest points bracket, and is in first place on the national leaderboard for both part A and part B against 1607 other teams.
The team now has a nail-biting wait for the final challenge which is released on December 15.
Team member, Euan McKenzie said: “We are determined to hold on to our lead and are using the information from previous challenges to find a ‘crib’ which will help us to break of the final cipher as quickly as possible.”
Head teacher, Ruth Poppleton said: “This competition is great way for our students to have both fun and a challenge with maths and to test their skills against schools right around the country.
“It’s just one of many things we do to enrich our students’ learning and to promote our work in mathematics and computing. We are very proud of their achievement.”