St Dunstans Visit

Huge thanks to year 6 for letting me visit today, and talk about codes and ciphers.  This is a part of their work on World War 2 at the moment.




We looked at some older ways of hiding codes, including shaving heads, tattooing it, and then letting the hair grow back, wrapping a strip of paper around a stick, and then writing the message, and even writing the message on the inside of a hard boiled egg (sadly this experiment has now failed 3 times, so it is not the most reliable method!!


We moved on to look at Caesar ciphers, pigpen ciphers (font here), and the Sherlock Holmes Dancing men cipher (Font here).  NB. Please ask permission before installing new fonts to your computer.


Eventually we moved on to talk about the magnificent work done by Bletchley PArk code breakers during the second world war.  We found a major flaw in the enigma code by putting loads and loads of 'D's into a virtual enigma, and looking at the output.  Here is the virtual enigma we used - can you spot any flaws!


I want to thank Y6 at St Dunstans again for letting me visit, and making me feel so welcome.  Hopefully many of them will work with us on the National Cipher Challenge when they join us next year

Year 5 Caeser Shifts...

Congratulations to Y5 for making such fantastic code wheels today, and decrytping such wonderful work.

Don't forget to bring your code wheels with you to open evening.

Feel free to reply to the following message in the comments for this blog...

the only clue I will give you is gT....

ZL SNIBEVGR OVG NOBHG BHE QNL NG WBUA ORAGYRL JNF

Comments will be published once moderated.

See you Thursday!

Year 8 Enigma Challenge Day

10 intrepid year 8 came on a maths trip across to chippenham for a gifted and talented event looking at codes, code breaking and problem solving.

There were 5 sessions, a lecture from a very enthusiastic cambridge profesor, with a real working 2nd world war enigma machine, followed by 4 sessions that covered more code breaking, mystery solving, a celtic knot investigation, and problem solving games and puzzles.

Many thanks to Miss Wenban for organising the trip

Here's what some of the students thought.

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A group of year 8 travelled to Sheldon School to take part in the Enigma Maths Challenge which consists of puzzles, breaking codes, mysteries and solving problems.

The day started in the hall, we joined the other schools that were already there. A mathematician from Cambridge University came in with an enigma machine which was used in World War 2 to make and break codes. We all got the chance to see how the machine worked and it is the only one that is not in a museum.

The mathematician talked to us about his job and what we would be doing during the day. He talked to us that there are jobs that are just breaking codes and solving problems. Some of the best code breakers were used during the war to solve any codes that the Germans sent. After a while a machine was built so that the English could find out what the message said before the German officers knew what it said.

We learnt a lot about the enigma machine and how it worked at what different things mathematicians do as a job. The talk was very helpful and inspiring.

Kayleigh Roberts

[click here for a virtual enigma machine!]

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We did a lesson on code breaking with a mathematician from Cambridge University. He showed us lots of different methods to decipher codes for example very famous codes such as the caesar code. He gave us lots of different codes for us to work them out and decipher them. As we went along we got better and could handle more difficult ones so we definately learnt new skills and we will take them back to JBS. Overall the lesson and the whole day was very good and we had a great time!
Caoimhe Kelly

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Celtic Knots

Practical Puzzles