SLAVE TO THE ALGORITHM
Codebreaking
As Dulwich Inventive progressed, a series of cryptic clues hidden around the College formed a code to be broken. For Yusuf Tarajia (Year 13), taking part in the competition opened a door on the complex but increasingly important world of cryptography, algorithms and internet security
I had deciphered the myriad of perplexing clues incorporating paper phones and rainbow mosaics, and was now left with the phrase: ‘First to email Master the year hidden in inventive logo.’ This was the final piece of a very tough jigsaw: every day during Dulwich Inventive Week a clue had been revealed, beginning with a secret message to be deciphered during a ‘lesson hijack’ at the start of the week. It became a test of patience and endurance, the search for patterns and codes rewarding only the most persistent of pupils, a small number of whom made it to the final stage. The first clue was hidden in plain sight in the colourful booklet containing the programme for the week. Random letters on the
introductory page were highlighted yellow, spelling out a secret message that you had to follow to unlock the next clue. How this was initially found out I will never know, but once I had caught wind of it, I began the arduous task of deciphering the daily clues. This culminated in a mysterious grid of numbers that I deduced had to be some sort of co-ordinate system. Each set of three numbers corresponded to a certain letter on a name on the southern face of the College War Memorial. I breathed a sigh of relief as I hurried over to my computer to email the Master the prize-winning answer: 2015. Victory was in my grasp. No one I knew who had been participating in the race had figured out the
solution and my hopes of winning rose with every character I typed. I clicked send, anxiously awaiting a response. Moments later I received a notification on my phone. It was from the Master. I hurriedly opened the message and skimmed through it. My heart sank as I was informed that I wasn’t the first, second, third or even fourth person to have answered correctly but, much to my dismay, the fifth. I was gutted and attempted to salvage some form of glory by emailing the Master with a request to consider me for runner-up. Once I had recovered that evening, I was browsing through my Facebook newsfeed when an article on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden piqued my interest. Lauding Snowden for his revelations, the writer highlighted the
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