QR code?
Given the 25x25 grid and the promise of future puzzles, this is presumably a QR code. I'll have a go at it if I have time later today; maybe other readers could share their experiences if they do well with it?
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's signals intelligence organisation, has revealed its Christmas card. The boring bits of the card, which will come from director GCHQ Robert Hannigan, is a painting called “Adoration of the Shepherds” from the brush of one of Rembrandt's students. The interesting bits …
So a brief, non-spoilerish summary of my efforts so far:
Solving the nonagram does indeed give you a QR code. This takes you to a GCHQ site - which was down when I visited but was cached in google so I used that as well.
That size contains six multiple-choice questions (A-F), which are combined to form a URL that leads to the next set of the puzzle (e.g. ABCDEF.html). I couldn't work out some of the questions so I wrote a script to check every possible combination for a page that wasn't "sorry, you haven't got them all right, please try again".
Doing this got me to stage three, which contained four more brain teasers, the answers of which gave another URL. This time the answers were words and so I couldn't brute force it, but the questions were easier and I got through to step four.
Step four is three number sequences questions, on which I'm completely stuck. Anyone got to step five? Any hints?
If that is non-spoilers, you should never apply for a job writing for a TV listings magazine.
Nah, spoilers would have been the answers.
Plus, he didn't give away the surprise ending. I saw the ending when a mate of mine completed the challenge and black-clad operatives stormed his cubicle.
Or if they want to make sure that their codes are secure:
@Tom7
I picked up this story yesterday from a national newspaper, and downloaded the appropriate GCHQ page. I try again this morning to reload a clean copy, and the site stalls, as you report.
It is indeed a QR code, but it was getting late and I made a mistake somewhere in the late stages. Like sudoku puzzles, when you find you have messed it up, you have to go back a long way.
It can be cracked by a (nearly) brute force program - first iteration took about 45 minutes computer time (C on a Mac Book Pro) and pretty much maxed out memory (16G). Admittedly there was no real attempt to optimise anything other than remembering to keep it all in memory as much as possible. Possibly post competition end date the Reg could invite and host source offerings?
Well to be fair it took 5 minutes to code, but I did get a nice ascii picture. Looking at the code again, 10 minutes to code would probably have meant 5 minutes to run, 20 minutes to code and maybe 10s to run :-( but the laptop wasn't doing anything else and I used the time to have a beer
Either the website is getting hammered or connection to the US is bit erratic. I get none of the directions and just a bit of the puzzle before it dies and it's allegedly 3811X3545 pixels.
I'm showing outbound and almost no inbound traffic on the LAN connection for this. No joy with either IE or Firefox. I wonder if I should be wearing my tinfoil hat?
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Not just the main GCHQ site. Subgroup sites such as CESG's are also down. Not that the IT security guidance they provide has been updated in line with the new (only 20 months old) government security framework, but they are still useful occasionally. Just not today.
Thanks for the link.
On first glance at the image (ie, didn't read the article), it reminded me of the Mojette Transform. Of course, it's not that since the axes have multiple numbers and the angles are only 90 and 180 degrees. Still, given how thematically similar they are, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the later challenges did involve the Mojette transform.
Anon, since a puzzle based on MT seems interesting enough that I might some day decide to publish something on it.
The JPG is over 500K. Considering that it is just a two colour image on a nonogram board, they could have reduced the file-size to just a few K without losing any content.
Now, the question is were they really that stupid, or is there some other data hidden in the file?
I really can't decide which of the two possibilities is the right one.
Given they used hidden data in a previous recruitment campaign, I'd bet the latter.
Every time they try this, people pick through it and publish their findings on the web. If they cared, they could serve every visitor a unique puzzle which terminates at a unique url. Maybe they're trying to do that this time and that's why the traffic is hobbling it so easily.
"We know when you are sleeping / We know when you're awake / We already knew enough to track potential terrorists but didn't / But we want to erode what little remains of your privacy even further anyway".
I was worried that this didn't scan too well, but I suspect GCHQ will have no problem scanning it along with everything else.
The lyrics could just as equally well describe GCHQ with some slight tweaking.
They're making a list
They're checking it twice
They're gonna find out who's naughty or nice
A government SWAT team is coming to town.
They know when you are sleeping
They know when you're awake
They know if you've been bad or good
And if your name is Mohammed you'll get dragged off to Belmarsh for enhanced interrogation
Very good. A slight tweaking again makes it scan better, with your permission :
They're making a list
They're checking it twice
They're gonna find out who's naughty or nice
A Black Ops SWAT team's coming to town.
.
They know when you're sleeping
They'll know when you wake
They'll know everything with the the data they take
A Black Ops SWAT team's coming to town.
"Morse code
I've just noticed that the tiles that are already shaded spell GCHQ in morse code.
Nice touch but probably useless to the puzzle. Unless it is a clue for the next stage."
You're right, I wondered why some of the easy lines had stuff in them. It only spells GCHQ though, so probably just to humorous way to give a clue on what to do.only spend a few minutes so far as my day job is getting in the way.
1)
a) http://a.teall.info/nonogram
b) {"ver":[[7,3,1,1,7],[1,1,2,2,1,1],[1,3,1,3,1,1,3,1],[1,3,1,1,6,1,3,1],[1,3,1,5,2,1,3,1],[1,1,2,1,1],[7,1,1,1,1,1,7],[3,3],[1,2,3,1,1,3,1,1,2],[1,1,3,2,1,1],[4,1,4,2,1,2],[1,1,1,1,1,4,1,3],[2,1,1,1,2,5],[3,2,2,6,3,1],[1,9,1,1,2,1],[2,1,2,2,3,1],[3,1,1,1,1,5,1],[1,2,2,5],[7,1,2,1,1,1,3],[1,1,2,1,2,2,1],[1,3,1,4,5,1],[1,3,1,3,10,2],[1,3,1,1,6,6],[1,1,2,1,1,2],[7,2,1,2,5]],"hor":[[7,2,1,1,7],[1,1,2,2,1,1],[1,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,1],[1,3,1,1,5,1,3,1],[1,3,1,1,4,1,3,1],[1,1,1,2,1,1],[7,1,1,1,1,1,7],[1,1,3],[2,1,2,1,8,2,1],[2,2,1,2,1,1,1,2],[1,7,3,2,1],[1,2,3,1,1,1,1,1],[4,1,1,2,6],[3,3,1,1,1,3,1],[1,2,5,2,2],[2,2,1,1,1,1,1,2,1],[1,3,3,2,1,8,1],[6,2,1],[7,1,4,1,1,3],[1,1,1,1,4],[1,3,1,3,7,1],[1,3,1,1,1,2,1,1,4],[1,3,1,4,3,3],[1,1,2,2,2,6,1],[7,1,3,2,1,1]]}
2) Google "GCHQ's Christmas Puzzle Part 2" and wonder why a robots.txt wasn't used.
Turing just relied on being able to complete an ordinary-looking Times crossword in 10 minutes (here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11151478/Could-you-have-been-a-codebreaker-at-Bletchley-Park.html ), followed by a short follow-up test.
He didn't do too badly out of it.
"Crossword-solving, like mathematics and code-breaking itself, involves creative, lateral thinking, “not being a robot and following a procedure”."
A nonogram that my first thought was "QR Code" isn't exactly creative, lateral thinking. Maybe this explains why GCHQ are struggling to match their US counterparts infiltration powers and why our answers tend to be "give us the keys" and "stop people using encryption" instead.