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What does a spy agency give for Christmas? How about a riddle wrapped in a riddle within a mystery?
GCHQ, Britain’s electronics and cyber-intelligence agency, released its annual report on Wednesday Christmas Challenge – A seasonal greeting card that works as a set of fiendishly difficult puzzles designed to excite young minds to solve numbers and uncover clues.
The challenge is aimed at 11-18-year-olds, who are encouraged to work as a team and use “lateral thinking, ingenuity and perseverance” to crack seven puzzles set by “inner riddlers” from GCHQ.
The card is sent by the head of GCHQ (short for Government Communications Headquarters) to other national security chiefs around the world. The puzzles were first featured in 2015 and have become an annual tradition. The card can be downloaded from the GCHQ website and has become popular with teachers; the agency says a third of UK secondary schools have downloaded it.
The agency admits that the festive fun has an ulterior motive.
GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler said she hoped the card would inspire young people to explore STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects “and to consider what a career in cyber security and intelligence could offer”.
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It also aims to dispel some myths about intelligence work, pushed by super-agent James Bond and other fictional spies.
GCHQ’s “head of puzzles” Colin said the challenge is best solved by teamwork, in contrast to the popular image of the lone genius or solo secret agent.
“Don’t get me wrong: we have geniuses in the department,” said Colin, who gave only his first name because of the secretive nature of his work. “But fundamentally what we have is a large number of people with different skills coming together.
“The skills we want are quite diverse. We like analytical skills but also lateral thinking skills. And we like the idea of some of these puzzles involving some perseverance to get to the answer.”
The card includes a map of the UK, showing the locations where GCHQ is based, including its high-tech headquarters in Cheltenham, western England, nicknamed the donut because of its shape.
Many British people are fond of solving puzzles, and the link between puzzles and espionage is often celebrated, especially in the many books, films and TV shows about Bletchley Park, a complex of buildings and log cabins in north-west London where, during the Second World War, hundreds of mathematicians, cryptologists, crossword experts and computer pioneers worked to break the secret codes of Nazi Germany.
Historians say his work shortened World War II by up to two years.
Colin said that among new recruits to GCHQ, “we are now hearing more and more that they first heard about GCHQ through baffling”.
“It definitely inspires people.”
Technology has advanced immeasurably since the days of Bletchley Park, but reassuringly, making and solving puzzles is one area that still needs the human touch.
“The AI doesn’t have a good record of setting or solving puzzles, not of this kind,” Colin said. “It’s still the case that people are able to create interesting puzzles in a way that AI is not, thank God.”
© 2024 The Canadian Press
