Diving into a week of linguistic puzzles
From the 17th to the 21st of November, Year 9 pupils spent the week cracking codes and deciphering messages written in both real and invented languages, all designed by the team behind the GCHQ National Language Competition. Throughout the week, students enthusiastically tackled puzzles that ranged from straightforward to extremely challenging.
What is the GCHQ National Language Competition?
The National Language Competition (NLC) is a virtual contest in which teams of 13–14-year-olds from across the UK compete to solve language-based challenges and score as many points as possible. Each team had access to the platform daily from 07:00 to 22:00 (with an earlier finish on the Friday). At school, students used registration time, language and some ICT lessons, and TOC time to contribute. However, many puzzles were completed at home.
A central feature of the NLC is that it requires no previous knowledge of foreign languages. Instead, the competition aims to spark an interest in language learning and highlight the many transferable skills it develops. A lot of the problems involved rare or entirely invented languages, enabling all students to participate fully, regardless of their prior experience.
Why take part?
This fantastic competition helped students cultivate a wide range of skills that will benefit them long into the future. Teamwork was vital, of course, but they also learned to think creatively, recognise patterns in symbol-based languages, and apply strong lateral-thinking skills to solve the trickier problems. Thanks to their impressive strategies and perseverance, they managed to work through nearly all of the activities on offer.
Throughout the week, pupils competed to earn points on their language-learning journey. These points will be totalled to determine each team’s position on the national leaderboard. The team with the highest score at the end of the competition will be crowned the winner!
The overall winning team, along with the regional winners, will be announced shortly. The national champions will also be invited to GCHQ in Cheltenham to receive their trophy.
What is GCHQ?
GCHQ is one of the three UK Intelligence and Security Agencies, along with MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). It protects the UK and its citizens from individuals, groups and countries who wish to do us harm, or damage us financially. GCHQ intelligence keeps the deployed forces safe and helps law enforcement agencies to prevent terrorist activity and serious and organised crime. https://www.gchq.gov.uk/section/locations/cheltenham
In the video below, the Director of GCHQ Anne Keast-Butler tells us more about the role of GCHQ.