The National Cipher Challenge is an annual cryptographic competition organised by the University of Southampton School of Mathematics.
[2] Participants must be in full-time school level education in order to qualify for prizes.
£25 cash prizes are awarded to eight random entrants who submit a correct solution for each part A of the challenge.
Leaderboards for the part B challenges are also compiled, based on how accurate solutions are and how quickly the entrant broke the cipher.
After the challenge the winners of the top prizes and other randomly selected entrants are invited to a day held at Bletchley Park consisting of lectures (with subjects such as the Semantic Web, World War II cryptography and computer programming) and the prize-giving ceremony.