600,000 People Have Failed To Solve These British Spy Puzzles; Want To Have A Crack?

Fancy yourself a code-cracking genius? Seen The Imitation Game and thought, “Pfft, I could do that”?

Well, it’s time to turn up. In December, the UK Government Communications Headquarters (basically, British Intelligence) created a “brain-teasing” puzzle as part of their Director’s annual Christmas card. It was eventually released to the public... and it’s driving people out of their mind.

There’s incentive to complete the thing: Solving the first puzzle gives players access to a series of increasingly difficult challenges, with a winner drawn from all the entrants who completed all tasks. (The prize hasn't been disclosed, but it'll certainly include a lot of boasting.) The problem, however, is that no one in the entire world has managed to solve all the puzzles. More than 600,000 people have attempted the first puzzle to date, with 30,000 reaching the final stage and submitting an entry. Yet, GCHQ says no one has solved all puzzles correctly. What makes this challenge particularly complicated is that some of the tasks do not let you know if you’ve answered correctly, or, in the case of some pictograms, even offer instructions. For example:

With one of the 30,000 entrants being a 14-year-old maths prodigy, here's our question: Is there a student in Australia up to the challenge? Time’s running out. Submissions close on January 31, 2016. Get started here. Pictures from GCHQ.