GCHQ Puzzle Christmas 2023

[Brian Boru]

Are you smarter than a MI5th grader?

GCHQ Christmas challenge: Agency reveals 2023 codebreaker

The annual brainteaser this year features a puzzle described as the toughest to date.

www.bbc.com

My Bond career is going to have to continue to rely on my indefinable insouciance and undoubted charm. I am fairly sure I got ONE of those

 

[ZedClampet]

Are you smarter than a MI5th grader?

GCHQ Christmas challenge: Agency reveals 2023 codebreaker

The annual brainteaser this year features a puzzle described as the toughest to date.

www.bbc.com

My Bond career is going to have to continue to rely on my indefinable insouciance and undoubted charm. I am fairly sure I got ONE of those

My old brain can't handle this at the moment. I'll look at it later.

 

[Zloth]

Hmmm... MIxMI=MAA. That's got to be 12x12=144 or 10x10=100. Well, not the last, because then both I and A would be 0, and that just ain't right. We've got I, A, and M nailed down.

TI+TI is RA. So that's T2+T2=R4. Well, T has to be less than 5 or we would get three digits. 1, 2, and 4 are taken. Putting 0 on the front would be naughty (that'd be an English joke). So T must be 3. So, the line becomes 32+32=R4. R has to be 6.

DO-SO+TI-MI=RE, so that's DO-SO+32-12=6E. Or DO-SO+20=6E. We don't know nuthin' 'bout E, but subtracting 0 from it isn't going to change it. So, we can say DO-SO=4E.

We might be able to get D and S, but we don't really care about those. We just want to know RExRE. We've already got R. The two O's mean that E has to be 0. If that's 95-55 or 97-57, the last two digits being the same means E is going to be 0.

So, this is 60X60=3600. (And I think D and S do have to be 9 and 5. They are the only digits left with a difference of 4.)

So, substitute back, and we get Christmas TREE. Q.E.D.

And whoever made that puzzle is way smarter than me. Coming up with a puzzle using solfege notes (except MAA) to get a Christmas thing!? Wow.

P.S. No clue on the first one. Declan, pudsey, and scarborough!? I don't even know what those are!

 

[Brian Boru]

Christmas TREE

You do nice work ,Sire I missed the MIxMI=MAA bit on a scan.

Declan, pudsey, and scarborough!? I don't even know what those are!

Latter 2 are towns in Yorkshire, and so is Beverley, so they're probably a trio.
Which leaves:
Declan, Jasmine, Penny, Pitch, Sirius, Sticky.

Sirius is the only one I can maybe isolate as either the brightest star or the radio station—but latter was USA, so probably not that. Can't see a star connection, so… only other Sirius I know is Sirius Black, of Harry Potter fame. I'm not familiar enough with HP, especially later ones—did he hook up with girls named Jasmine & Penny?

Pitch is an odd one. Might be cricket, to combine with Sticky wicket—is there a famous cricketer named Declan?
Hmm, Pitch Black would match with Sirius Black, and Penny Black is a famous stamp.

Okay, I'm saying Yorkshire and Black so far, which leaves:
Declan, Jasmine, Sticky—no rude comments, thank you!
Nah… I got nuttin'
However, Yorkshire and Black are both kinds of PUDDING, so I'm picking that as the puzzle solution to follow Christmas.

---

I think the rhyme is DAY.
What breaks but cannot fall, —Daybreak
can leap but never crawl, —Feb 29th
can be seized but never gripped, —Seize the Day
often present, never skipped? —Present Day

---

Agklq Idhum qom ndem.
Gembqgax c 4- hmqqmk vdke.
Hddp mumkxvomkm.
Ycxim gq'l umkx diugdst.

Okay, only obvious start is that gq'l is IT'S. c should be A.

So 4-hmqqmk is 4-??TT??—I'm guessing m is E, since it's before and after the TT. Mild chance the k is D or R, to provide an ED or ER ending. After IT'S, we have:

AIkST Idhum Tom ndem.
GembTIax c 4-hmTTmk vdke.
Hddp mumkxvomkm.
Ycxim IT'S umkx diuIdst.

Taking m for E—but could easily be A, possibly O:

AIkST IdhuE ToE ndeE.
GeEbTIax c 4-hETTEk vdke.
Hddp EuEkxvoEkE.
YcxiE IT'S uEkx diuIdst.

Aha, that looks like 4-LETTER WORD—the R is in the right places. Jump on that:

AIRST IOLuE ToE nODE.
GDEbTIax c 4-LETTER WORD.
HOOp EuERxWoERE.
YcxiE IT'S uERx OiuIOst.

Okay, that's got to be EVERYWHERE, which brings us to:

AIRST IOLVE THE nODE.
GDEbTIaY c 4-LETTER WORD.
HOOp EVERYWHERE.
YcYiE IT'S VERY OiVIOst.

OBVIOUS at the end, =

AIRST IOLVE THE nODE.
GDEbTIaY c 4-LETTER WORD.
HOOp EVERYWHERE.
YcYBE IT'S VERY OBVIOUS.

Which becomes:

First solve the code.
Identify a 4-letter word.
Look everywhere.
Maybe it's very obvious.

Which… what? Christmas ???? Oh, FILM! The first letter of each line. Geez.

This is too much like work—now I remember why I've dialed back on puzzles

 

[Zloth]

Oh, that's odd. There's no Declan or New Declan in the USA. I thought we had every town on those islands repeated over here somewhere! (Scarborough is on the coast of Maine, for instance.)

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Declan Rice is a footballer for England.

Takes bow...

 

[Brian Boru]

Declan, Jasmine, Sticky

…

Declan Rice is a footballer for England

Ohh… Jasmine is also a kind of rice. What about Sticky? Bing… YES!
So we have Rice PUDDING as well—all's well with the world.

There's no Declan or New Declan in the USA. I thought we had every town on those islands repeated over here somewhere

I'm not aware of a Declan town in England either. But means little of course, I'm not from there or haven't lived there. Over to resident Brits

 

[Brian Boru]

a bunch of UK-oriented questions

There is one of the eight which is UK-oriented.

it sure isn't measuring IQ

True, that must be why they are "designed to test skills such as codebreaking, maths and analysis".

identify British gentlemen

So far it's found a resident in the famous London suburb of Kansas, and a Paddy from the Bog—can a Hill Billy be far behind?

---

Find the pairs of letters which come next in each sequence:
T H, RD, ND, ??
ET, EL, PM, ??
WU, SQ, 0M, ??
WR, AP, PI, ??

So there are 16 unique letters used, hmm.
A
D
E
H
I
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
W

A alone for 1?
Skip 2
DE for 2?
Skip2
HI for 2
Skip 2
L-U for 10
Skip 1
W for 1

Huh

🐶 Feels like I'm barking up the wrong tree 🐕

ETA: well FFS, I screwed that up!
I mixed in the music clue with this one, gah.

Okay, 16 uniques, and there will be 16 pairs once we fill in the missing ones—suggestive.
Doubles already: DEMRTW
Px3
Singles: AHILNOQSU

Doesn't quite work out…

Converting each letter's alphabet position:
20-8, 18-4, 14-4, ??
5-20, 5-12, 16-13, ??
23-21, 19-17, 15-13, ??
23-18, 1-16, 16-9, ??

Is 3rd row a fluke, or is it KI—11-9?
🐶

 

[Brian Boru]

Got this one:

Spoiler: Solution

TIME—each letter's position in the alphabet is shown by the clock

 

[Brian Boru]

Find the pairs of letters which come next in each sequence:
T H, RD, ND, ??
ET, EL, PM, ??
WU, SQ, 0M, ??
WR, AP, PI, ??

Oh, got this too!

Spoiler: Solution to #5

Line 3 is indeed KI. I was gazing idly at Line 4 saying wrappiNG, when I eventually got thru the muck to put 3 & 4 together for KING—which made it almost definitely ST and OC for the first 2 lines.

Took a bit to realize Line 1 is the letters of 4th 3rd 2nd 1st.
Line 2 is probably complete backwards, that's all I can see—but that seems a bit off

Christmas STOCKING

ETA: I have a wild guess for #6, but no idea how to actually work it out.

Spoiler: #6 Guess

CAROL
It's a music Q and the obvious XMas music is a carol. There are also 5 sections in the image, suggesting 5 letters maybe??? And 5 numbers… Like I said, wild guess

 

[Brian Boru]

So only the final one left to stare at:

ETA: I actually have a guess, but haven't even begun to work it out

Spoiler: #8 guess

Yuletide Felicitations

Based solely on the XMas theme, and the letter counts—courtesy of a lot of Hangman playing

Now to try and figure it out…

 

[Brian Boru]

the final one

8 in top row.
6 unique icons, 5 unique numbers.

13 in bottom row.
Only 1 new icon, and 1 new number, 5—with 1 of the top line numbers, 3, missing.

Replace the icons with letters A-G, to be able to ID them more easily.

Top Line:
A3 B2 C3 D4 E1 F6 A1 E3
Bottom Line:
C1 E1 G5 C2 G1 D2 F2 A2 D1 B5 G4 B6 F1
G is the new icon in Bottom.

Got nothing, can't see any connection to my guess, so that's probably wrong—so it may not even be 2 words of 8 and 13 letters.

 

[ZedClampet]

There is one of the eight which is UK-oriented.



True, that must be why they are "designed to test skills such as codebreaking, maths and analysis".



So far it's found a resident in the famous London suburb of Kansas, and a Paddy from the Bog—can a Hill Billy be far behind?

---

Find the pairs of letters which come next in each sequence:
T H, RD, ND, ??
ET, EL, PM, ??
WU, SQ, 0M, ??
WR, AP, PI, ??

So there are 16 unique letters used, hmm.
A
D
E
H
I
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
W

A alone for 1?
Skip 2
DE for 2?
Skip2
HI for 2
Skip 2
L-U for 10
Skip 1
W for 1

Huh

🐶 Feels like I'm barking up the wrong tree 🐕

ETA: well FFS, I screwed that up!
I mixed in the music clue with this one, gah.

Okay, 16 uniques, and there will be 16 pairs once we fill in the missing ones—suggestive.
Doubles already: DEMRTW
Px3
Singles: AHILNOQSU

Doesn't quite work out…

Converting each letter's alphabet position:
20-8, 18-4, 14-4, ??
5-20, 5-12, 16-13, ??
23-21, 19-17, 15-13, ??
23-18, 1-16, 16-9, ??

Is 3rd row a fluke, or is it KI—11-9?
🐶

I only looked at the word one that was in the link. I assumed that was representative of the whole. I should know better than that.

If you finish this up, I might be able to dig up a test for you. It's a test given by a tech company to their prospective employees. I have to look through my files, though. It's been a very long time since I've seen those scans.

 

[ZedClampet]

Nope. I was wrong about that puzzle. I was sure that one of them was correct and assumed that all the rest followed suit, but @Brian Boru 's answer seems correct.

I didn't think I had actually posted the answer (wrong answer). I quickly figured out I was wrong and thought I was just changing the post, but apparently I was editing it. Wasn't trying to eliminate the evidence of my being wrong. I'd spend all day doing nothing but that if I cared about that hahahaha

If none of this makes sense, my apologies. I thought I'd solved (at a glance, no less) one of the puzzles and gave an incorrect hint to Brian who had already solved it and didn't need my BS

@Brian Boru look at the new ending of the post above and let me know if you are interested.

 

[Alm]

8 in top row.
6 unique icons, 5 unique numbers.

13 in bottom row.
Only 1 new icon, and 1 new number, 5—with 1 of the top line numbers, 3, missing.

Replace the icons with letters A-G, to be able to ID them more easily.

Top Line:
A3 B2 C3 D4 E1 F6 A1 E3
Bottom Line:
C1 E1 G5 C2 G1 D2 F2 A2 D1 B5 G4 B6 F1
G is the new icon in Bottom.

Got nothing, can't see any connection to my guess, so that's probably wrong—so it may not even be 2 words of 8 and 13 letters.

Could the numbers refer to the previous questions? Numbers are 1-6 and there are 7 questions. I don’t know, just came to mind.

 

[ZedClampet]

Hahaha I just asked Bing the question I was working on (I've decided I'm not in the mood to think this hard), and I got 3 paragraphs of complete nonsense. It made up every word of it.

The first thing it told me was that WL were the last two letters of the word Omega. Then it went on like this for for 3 very long paragraphs.

As soon as it finished, I typed, "Explain to me how WL are the last two letters of Omega?"

It said, "I apologize for the confusion. You’re correct, “WR” are not the last two letters of “Omega”. That was a mistake in my previous message."

So I typed, "Other than WR not being the last letters of Omega, what were some other errors in that message?"

It said, "Oops, I think we've reached the end of this conversation. Click “New topic,” if you would!"

That's just copied and pasted from Bing lol. It just wanted to change the subject haha

On the bright side, it hasn't gotten angry in awhile.

 

[Brian Boru]

let me know if you are interested

Not really, but thanks of course
As said, I've backed off of puzzles mostly—I just got the rhyme one straight away, and should've spotted what Zloth saw, so those sucked me back in

If none of this makes sense, my apologies

Oh man, no worries—we're totally used to you by now

Could the numbers refer to the previous questions?

It's a thought, but not twigging anything for me—then again, brain has gone on strike for the rest of the day

 

[Zloth]

Oh, got this too!

Now wait a minute! Why is line 3 like you said it is? Also, you got the final word, but did you figure out how the first two lines work? This is a puzzle for kids, we gr'ups need to solve more of it than they do!

ETA: I have a wild guess for #6, but no idea how to actually work it out.

Hmmmm.... ignore the note positions (with no clef, you kinda have to) and the numbers are 3, 1, 18, 15, 12. I bet you can figure the way to your answer with that!

 

[Brian Boru]

Why is line 3 like you said it is?

Explained end of post #8—simplest line there, arithmetic sequence.

did you figure out how the first two lines work?

Explained in #10 spoiler.

the numbers are 3, 1, 18, 15, 12. I bet you can figure the way to your answer with that!

Hah, good guess! But how did you get those numbers? I still don't see it—my dad could read music, but I'm clueless.

Still nothing for final puzzle #8.

 

[Zloth]

Hah, good guess! But how did you get those numbers? I still don't see it—my dad could read music, but I'm clueless.

You don't need to! The solid notes are 1s, the hollow notes are 0's. How high or low they are doesn't matter. So, you don't pay attention to what notes the notes note.

 

[Brian Boru]

The solid notes are 1s, the hollow notes are 0's

Ahh! Nice