A Christmas card with a cryptographic twist for charity
News article - 7 Dec 2015
This year, along with his traditional Christmas cards, Director GCHQ Robert Hannigan 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 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 31 January 2016. The winner will then be drawn from all the successful entries and notified soon after. Players are invited to make a donation to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, if they have enjoyed the puzzle.
People who enjoy puzzles, but who are not yet on Director's Christmas card list, need not worry. The first puzzle can be seen below.
Getting started
In this type of grid-shading puzzle, each square is either black or white. Some of the black squares have already been filled in for you.
Each row or column is labelled 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.
Click on image for a downloadable version.
Complete the grid carefully with a black pen and check your answer is complete and correct before proceeding.
Good luck and happy Christmas!
As far as I know, no one has claimed to have solved to puzzle.
On Jan. 28 they issued a press release with one-and only one-clue:
As Christmas puzzle deadline looms, GCHQ says 'no winning answers yet'
