Conundrum: Crack the Ultimate Cipher Challenge

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785784102 ISBN 13: 9781785784101

Publisher: Icon Books, 2019

The ultimate trial of knowledge and cunning, Conundrum features 200 cryptic puzzles and ciphers. The solutions link throughout the book - so you need to solve them all to get to the final round.

With a focus on ciphers and codebreaking, Conundrum contains twenty sections, each built around a specific subject from music to literature, physics to politics. To take on Conundrum you need good general knowledge and the ability to think laterally. But if you need help, there are plenty of hints to point you in the right direction.

Whether you attempt to crack it alone or work in a team, Conundrum will challenge you to the extreme.

Can you take on Conundrum and win? There’s only one way to find out...

About the Author:

Brian Clegg's most recent books are The Reality Frame (Icon, 2017), What Color is the Sun? (Icon, 2016) and Ten Billion Tomorrows (St Martin's Press, 2016). His Dice World and A Brief History of Infinity were both longlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. He has also written Big Data and Gravitational Waves for Icon's Hot Science series. Brian has written for numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, Nature, BBC Focus, Physics World, The Times and The Observer. He is editor of popularscience.co.uk and blogs at brianclegg.blogspot.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1.1 (Literature) – Caesar’s novel

Decrypt the title of this well-known novel:

YMJ HFYHMJW NS YMJ WDJ

3.4 (Movies) – Of all the bars

The classic movie Casablanca is set during wartime, when conveying secrets safely was particularly important. Casablanca is also an unusual word because of the number of times it features the letter A. Our codemaker, inspired by watching
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, has designed a cipher which involves choosing a single letter which will appear repeatedly in the enciphered message. The message is simply found by taking each of the letters that appears immediately after the repeated letter. Unfortunately, she didn’t say what
that repeated letter is.

Source: I BET PEWS OR LEISURE CHAINS CAN SEEM TO STINK
OF EFFORT, GEORGE, UNDER NO ILLUSIONS OF
VANITY.

8.9 (Astronomy) – Edmond’s enigma

These numbers are a selection from a series (there are some
gaps): 1066, 1145, 1456, 1682 and 1986.

What numbershould immediately follow 1682?