Alan Turing • Bank of England £50 note • GCHQ Can you crack the code? GCHQ mark new Alan Turing £50 note with ‘toughest ever puzzle’
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spy chiefs today unveiled their toughest ever puzzle for the public to solve to mark Alan Turing going on the £50 note.
They warned it could take seven hours to work out for an expert puzzle solver, and far longer for many other people.
Bosses at GCHQ, the spy listening centre based in Cheltenham, paid tribute to Turing as one of history’s “brightest minds” who played a key role in breaking the German Enigma cipher, which helped to shorten the Second World War.
And they hailed the significance of Turing becoming the first gay man to appear on a banknote, which will go into circulation on June 23 -- the code breaker’s birthday.
GCHQ director Jeremy Fleming said: “Alan Turing’s appearance on the £50 note is a landmark moment in our history. “Not only is it a celebration of his scientific genius which helped to shorten the war and influence the technology we still use today, it also confirms his status as one of the most iconic LGBT+ figures in the world. “Turing was embraced for his brilliance and persecuted for being gay. Puzzle 1
“His legacy is a reminder of the value of embracing all aspects of diversity, but also the work we still need to do to become truly inclusive.”
The spy bosses regard Turing as the father of modern computing, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, and instrumental in breaking the German Naval Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park, which was GCHQ’s base, during the Second World War.
GCHQ’s “Turing Challenge”, which is a set of 12 puzzles, was compiled by intelligence staff at GCHQ who are expert at cracking codes and other problem solving.
“Alan Turing has inspired many recruits over the years to join GCHQ, eager to use their own problem-solving skills to help to keep the country safe,” said GCHQ’s chief puzzler Colin, who works as an analyst.
Puzzle 2
So it seemed only fitting to gather a mix of minds from across our missions to devise a seriously tough puzzle to honour his commemoration on the new fifty pound note. It might even have left him scratching his head – although we very much doubt it!”
The puzzles are based on the unique design elements of the new banknote, such as the technical drawings for the British Bombe, the machine designed by Turing to break Enigma-enciphered messages during WWII.
GCHQ puzzlers say the full challenge could take an experienced puzzler seven hours to complete.
The spy bosses issued a short history of his achievements before his tragic death in 1954 at the age of 41. An inquest recorded his death as suicide.
Turing joined the Government Code & Cypher School, GCHQ’s wartime name, in 1938 to help with the code-breaking effort during the Second World War, working alongside Gordon Welchman. Turing was a leading cryptanalyst at Bletchley park, and spearheaded the effort in Hut 8 focusing on the German Naval Enigma. Here he worked closely with Joan Clarke.
In January 1940, Turing met with Polish counterparts in Paris, who gave him the insights he needed to design the Bombe. The Bombe was the first special-purpose British cryptanalytic machine and made a major contribution to the exploitation of Enigma. The combination of the Bombe and the brilliant minds and perseverance of those working at Bletchley Park led to the breaking of Enigma.
In late 1942 Turing went on a liaison trip to the USA where he worked on investigating secure speech systems and helped with the development of what would become the US cipher machine SIGABA. After his return to the UK in 1943 he developed a portable secure voice scrambler (codenamed Delilah) at the secret UK government laboratory at Hanslope Park. His skills at finding and exploiting weaknesses in other people’s systems made him best placed to design new secure systems.
In 1945, Turing left GCHQ to work at the National Physical Laboratory in London. While there, he worked on the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) which was the first detailed design of a stored-program computer.
In 1948, Turing joined the Mathematics Department at Manchester University. A year later, he became Deputy Director of the Computing Machine Laboratory. Working with Max Newman, he led a team that produced Britain’s first general-purpose stored programme computer (the Manchester Mark 1) and then the first commercial computer (the Ferranti Mark 1). In 1950, Turing turned his attention to artificial intelligence and proposed an experiment attempting to define a standard for a machine to be called “intelligent”, this became known as the Turing Test.
In January 1952, Turing was prosecuted for indecency over his relationship with another man in Manchester. During the trial, Hugh Alexander, the Head of Cryptanalysis at GCHQ, was given official approval to go
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