Elizavet Sheremetyeva, Sixth Former at Oxford High, has won the prestigious Ada Lovelace Prize in the National Cipher Challenge, sponsored by the British Computer Society. Currently in Year 12, Elizaveta is studying Maths, Further Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and still found time to take part in the competition this year!
She is an experience competitor in the National Cipher Challenge and in recent years wrote a guide to cracking the hardest challenges. This year, she wrote a program to work out the keys to the keyed VIgenere cipher in Challenge 10B by guessing some of the words in the encrypted cipher. There had been liberally sprinkled hints about Vigenere throughout the competition and, as with other entries, Elizaveta used index of coincidence methods to work towards the solution. She avoided the trap set (with a very mean red herring!) pointing towards Playfair ciphers.
A huge congratulations to Elizaveta from all at Oxford High!
