Can you crack code on GCHQ plaque unveiled by the Queen?
CRACKING a code devised by the masters of British intelligence is no easy task.
But now fans of brainteasers can pit their wits against GCHQ when they walk past the top secret agency’s original headquarters in central London.
A plaque celebrating the centenary of the organisation was unveiled by the Queen yesterday at Watergate House, near Charing Cross, but as well as the usual dedication and dates, there are two hidden messages.
The puzzles consist of a series of dots and dashes that appear under various letters. To reveal the first hidden message, passers-by have to look out for where the dots and dashes appear on the plaque to reveal a three-word phrase. For the second, would be spooks need to employ a famous encoding scheme to reveal a single word.
Continuing the code theme, after the ceremony yesterday, the Queen sent an unusual thank you message.
The Royal family’s official Twitter account posted the message (pictured above right). Followers were challenged to decode the apparently jumbled series of letters and numbers.
Jeremy Fleming, the agency’s director, said during the unveiling ceremony that the day marked 100 years of the organisation’s role in “keeping the country safe”. “In 1919, 100 men and women walked down this street and came through those doors,” he said.
“They came together from the war office and the admiralty to form a suitably anonymous government code and cipher school.
“Our work is not often glamorous. But over the last 100 years, it has saved countless lives, it has shortened wars, it has given Britain an edge.
“The world is more interconnected than ever before. And this is driving extraordinary opportunity, innovation and progress. But it’s also unleashing amazing complexity, uncertainty and risk. To keep up in this digital era, we know we need to keep reinventing.”
The Queen disclosed that George VI, her father, often became frustrated with his scrambler phone – an encrypted device that had been modified by GCHQ to keep his calls secret.
She said: “I remember my father had one, he used to get so cross when it didn’t scramble. Took some time to heat up and then work.”
Ruth Bourne, 92, a Bletchley Park Second World War codebreaker, was among the guests. She said: “I didn’t realise the immensity of the work we were doing. We didn’t realise at the time how difficult it was going to be or that there were 159million million million ways that one letter could be encrypted.” Other guests included Alastair Denniston, the eldest grandson of GCHQ’S first head; Alex Younger, MI6’S chief, and Andrew Parker, MI5’S director-general.
Pupils from the Piggott School in Reading, Berks, who won the 2018 Cyberfirst Girls competition devised by GCHQ, told the Queen how it had inspired their interest in possible codebreaking work in future. “Sounds like you’re going to get more women,” the Queen told Mr Fleming. Code 1: “One hundred years”. (Pick each number or letter with a dot or a dash below it and read in the sequence they appear on the plaque.)
Code 2: “Secret”. (When read in Morse code, the dots and dashes on the plaque spell out the word ‘secret’.)
Code 3: “Hello GCHQ. It was great to be part of your 100th celebrations. Thank you for having us”. (The cryptic message is solved by using an alphabetic code, in which A is Z, B is Y, and so on.)