Ready to Start Your Career?
By: Harwinder Singh
April 14, 2018
NSA | Crypto Challenge of the Week | Week 15
By: Harwinder Singh
April 14, 2018
Intelligence. It's the ability to think abstractly. Challenge the unknown. Solve the impossible. NSA employees work on some of the world's most demanding and exhilarating high-tech engineering challenges. Applying complex algorithms and expressing difficult cryptographic problems in terms of mathematics is part of the work NSA employees do every day.Today I solved the Crypto Challenge of week 15. It took me a total of 2 hours and 13 minutes to finish. First, I tried to find common 2 letter words.
After that, I found the word mathematics. I searched on google for mathematics in 1971 on which I found the following article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Women_in_MathematicsFrom the start of this challenge, I was searching for a name consisting of 2 x 4 letter parts. Mary Gray was the best name I found in my criteria. I continued searching for Mary Gray and found that she had won awards in 2001 which matched up perfectly! After some more thorough searching and testing, I completed the challenge!A --> MB --> WC --> UD --> TF --> EH --> IJ --> RK --> AL --> NM --> DN --> PO --> LP --> YR --> HS --> OT --> CW --> SX --> GY --> FZ --> X
After that, I found the word mathematics. I searched on google for mathematics in 1971 on which I found the following article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Women_in_MathematicsFrom the start of this challenge, I was searching for a name consisting of 2 x 4 letter parts. Mary Gray was the best name I found in my criteria. I continued searching for Mary Gray and found that she had won awards in 2001 which matched up perfectly! After some more thorough searching and testing, I completed the challenge!A --> MB --> WC --> UD --> TF --> EH --> IJ --> RK --> AL --> NM --> DN --> PO --> LP --> YR --> HS --> OT --> CW --> SX --> GY --> FZ --> XMARY GRAY, WHO FOUNDED THE ASSOCIATION FOR WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS IN 1971, WAS A 2001 RECIPIENT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS AND ENGINEERING MENTORING PROGRAM.
