This year, along
with his traditional Christmas cards, Director GCHQ
Robert Hannigan
below
is including a brain-teasing puzzle that seems certain to exercise the
grey matter of participants over the holiday season.
The card, which
features the 'Adoration
of the Shepherds' by a
pupil of Rembrandt, includes traditional Christmas greetings from the
Director on behalf of the department.
However, unlike
previous years, the 2015 card will contain a grid-shading puzzle and
instructions on how it should be completed. By solving this first puzzle
players will create an image that leads to a series of increasingly
complex challenges.
Once all stages have
been unlocked and completed successfully, players are invited to submit
their answer via a given GCHQ email address by
Sunday 31st January 2016.
The winner will then be drawn from all the successful entries and
notified soon after.
Each row or column
is labeled with a string of numbers. The numbers indicate the length of
all consecutive runs of black squares, and are displayed in the order
that the runs appear in that line. For example, a label "2 1 6"
indicates sets of two, one and six black squares, each of which will
have at least one white square separating them.
Note: You will have to
work out the number of white squares after each set of black squares.
Answer below.
AnswerPart 1
Click on puzzle for
larger image
You should now realise
the image is a QR (Quick
Response) Code, you will
need a QR Reader app to read the image. Either scan the image from the
screen or print the image first.
Q4. I
was looking at a man on top of a hill using flag semaphore to send a
message, but to me it looked like a very odd message. It began "ZGJJQ
EZRXM" before seemingly ending with a hashtag. Which hashtag?
Q2. What
comes after GREEN, RED, BROWN, RED, BLUE, YELLOW, PINK?
Answer:
E (BLUE)
Q3. Which
is the odd one out?
Answer:
F (SHAKA)
Q4. I
was looking at a man on top of a hill using flag semaphore to send a
message, but to me it looked like a very odd message. It began "ZGJJQ
EZRXM" before seemingly ending with a hashtag. Which hashtag?
Answer:
A (#SGM)
Q5. What
comes after 74, 105, 110, 103, 108, 101, 98, 101, 108, 108 ?
Answer:
C (115)
Q6. What comes next: D, D, P, V, C, C, D ?
Answer:
E (B)
On completion of all six
questions, you will be directed to
C.Samuel says: if agony is the opposite
of denial, and witty is the opposite of tepid, then what is the opposite
of smart? Answer?
D.The answers to the following
cryptic crossword clues are all words of the same length. We have
provided the first four clues only. What is the seventh and last answer?
1.Withdraw as sailors hold
festive sing-song 2.It receives a worker and returns a queen 3.Try
and sing medley of violin parts 4.Fit for capture 5. 6.
7.?
Samuel
Morse says: if agony is the opposite of denial, and witty
is the opposite of tepid, then what is the opposite of smart?
D:
layered
The answers to the
following cryptic crossword clues are all words of the same length. We
have provided the first four clues only. What is the seventh and last
answer?
The answer to each puzzle
is a single word, which can be
used to create a URL.
