1. Joke Competition
2. Enigma Project for Schools
3. Mind Games on BBC4 this week
4. Crypto Titbit
5. Cryptogram
6. World’s greatest card trick
7. Which singer is in the PRESBYTERIANS?
1. Joke Competition
I have trawled through all your entries and have now drawn up a short list of 15 scientific or mathematical jokes. I am sorry if your joke didn’t make it, but there were dozens of jokes and in the end I had to whittle them down.
You can vote for your favourite joke until midnight on January 10th. You can see the shortlist of jokes and find out how to vote here.
The sender of the winning joke will receive a copy of ‘Laughlab’, a book by Richard Wiseman about the psychology of humour. And one of the people who voted for the winning joke will win a copy of the excellent ‘How Long is a Piece of String?’ by Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham, a quirky collection of tales about mathematics.
2. Enigma Project for Schools
Because I am writing a new book, I can no longer visit schools and give talks. However, I am working with ex-Science Museum explainer Claire Ellis and we have started the Enigma Project. Claire is taking my genuine Enigma cipher machine to schools and giving lessons and workshops on codes and code breaking. I think Claire’s school visits help bring mathematics to life, showing its applications and explaining how mathematics has influenced history. You can find out more about the Enigma Project here.
3. Mind Games on BBC4 this week
Sorry for the error in my last email regarding my new TV series all about puzzles for BBC4. Mind Games was supposed to start before Christmas, but in fact it now starts on Friday (10 January) and runs for five Fridays at 7.30pm. The programmes are a mixture of number, word, physical, silly and knotty puzzles. You can find out more about Mind Games here.
4. Crypto Titbit
I was flicking through a back issue of New Scientist magazine and came across something that I thought was rather interesting. In 2000, after 67 years of keeping it secret, the US Government announced that in 1933 William Friedman and the National Security Agency applied for a patent on a way of generating an unbreakable code. The patent describes and sketches a typewriter keyboard with electrical connections made through wheels. The wheels move randomly thereby altering the connection paths, so that the typed output apparently bears no systematic relation to the input. This system seems to be remarkably similar to the German Enigma cipher, which is probably why the patent was classified.
5. Cryptogram
This time the prize is a copy of my cryptography CD-ROM and the Young Readers Edition of The Code Book, just published in America and to be published in the UK sooner or later. The book is ideal for 12-16 year olds, Because the prize is aimed at junior and teenage codebreakers, this cryptogram is not too difficult to crack. You can find it here.
The winner of last month’s cryptogram competition was Keith Wallace from Dublin, and a copy of The Science of Harry Potter by Roger Highfield is on its way to you. You can find the solution and information about ISBN error correction via a link at the bottom of this page.
I received more correct solutions than ever before for this cryptogram, so I have also sent translations of my books to six runners-up. Books are in the post to Renato Lucindo in Brazil, Robert Wieser in Austria, Arnaud Le Breton and Anders Haugen in Norway, Klaus Lierschaft in Germany and Roberto Pesce in Italy.
The online book bookshop was closed over Christmas, but it is now open again. You can visit the shop here.
6. World’s greatest card trick
I recently came across an incredibly clever mathematical card trick. You can find out more here.
7. Which singer is in the PRESBYTERIANS?
This is one of my favourite puzzles from the Mind Games series. If you can solve the anagram, then you might win a copy of Cryptography by world famous cryptographers Fred Piper and Sean Murphy. The book is subtitled A Very Short Introduction, and it is indeed just a primer, but one of the best around. To enter, just send me an email with the answer in your subject header, and the body of the email should contain your name, address and nothing else.
Good luck and cheerio,
Simon Singh.
Ps. If you need to email me, then please do not reply to this address, as your email will not reach me. Please go via the website and click the contact button. It takes me ages to answer emails, as I am struggling to keep up with my correspondence, so please be patient.