Code Busters C [National Trial]

[EastStroudsburg13]

Discussion for the Code Busters event.

[dragonfruit35]

Huh, that's cool. This used to be a VA trial event... guess it got promoted!

[JeZag]

Does anyone know anything about the nature or difficulty of the test questions?

I'm not sure it's possible to break a Vigenere cipher by hand without any hints, etc.

[Person]

Does anyone know anything about the nature or difficulty of the test questions?

I'm not sure it's possible to break a Vigenere cipher by hand without any hints, etc.

It does say that you might be asked to encrypt with a Vigenere cipher, not decrypt it, if that helps.

Note: Because cryptanalysis with an affine cipher, the Hill Cipher or a Vigenère Cipher is rather difficult, a problem might ask the team to encrypt with one of those ciphers. (In other words, to encode plaintext English writing into encoded ciphertext.)

[JeZag]

It does say that you might be asked to encrypt with a Vigenere cipher, not decrypt it, if that helps.

Note: Because cryptanalysis with an affine cipher, the Hill Cipher or a Vigenère Cipher is rather difficult, a problem might ask the team to encrypt with one of those ciphers. (In other words, to encode plaintext English writing into encoded ciphertext.)

Do you know where that quote is from?

All I could find relating to event instructions was this file: https://www.soinc.org/sites/default/fil ... rs2014.pdf

But thanks, that's a relief.

[T-55M]

I'm on mobile right now, but if you search "code busters science Olympiad" in Google, either the first or second link has the 2016 trial rules, and right underneath the hierarchy of difficulty it has that text.

[Unome]

I'm on mobile right now, but if you search "code busters science Olympiad" in Google, either the first or second link has the 2016 trial rules, and right underneath the hierarchy of difficulty it has that text.

On the National site page for trial events, rules with an asterisk are the ones that will be used at Nationals.