Division: B – Middle School

Event Rules: See the National Rule Manual

National Event Page: Here

Description:

Participants will cryptanalyze and decode encrypted messages using cryptanalysis techniques for historical and modern advanced ciphers.

Materials:

Teams must bring writing utensils and may bring up to three stand alone non-graphing, non-programmable, non-scientific 4 function or 5 function calculators.  No resource materials or other tools, may be used.  The Event Leader will provide scratch paper and will include a resource sheet with the Morse Code Table, English/Spanish letter frequencies, Porta Table, and Baconian mappings and modulus inverse tables as needed for the questions on the exam.

Scoring:

High score wins. Ties will be broken first by score, then by degree of correctness and number attempted. 

Final Score = Exam Score + Timing Bonus + Special Bonus

Recommendations:

This event allows up to 3 team members.  Teams are allowed to divide and conquer the test.

Resources

https://www.soinc.org/codebusters-c

Toebes Website: https://toebes.com/codebusters/index.html

How to build a test: https://www.youtube.com/@Codebusters-sciol

https://scioly.org/wiki/Codebusters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF8qobfKfdw

How to start ciphers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kisCoMBUXYo&list=PLiqgc6Z317ddoT35l0QrHQaYlY6vlnBs0 

FAQs

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