Signals from Woomera

In November 1967 a rocket lifted off from Woomera and put WRESAT, Australia's first satellite, into orbit. Today's signals come from the same red dirt.

Solve this cipher+ Follow Ciphers

1. Ciphers·24 Oct

   Light takes its time

   Ten puzzles on the speed of light, from prison tap code to a Nihilist cipher closer. Answers are hidden at the foot.
2. Ciphers·23 Oct

   The black box was Australian

   Ten puzzles on Australian inventions, from ASCII hex to an ADFGX closer. Answers are hidden at the foot.
3. Ciphers·19 Oct

   Dead drop in a hollow coin

   Ten puzzles built around the 1953 hollow nickel spy case in Brooklyn, from Morse code up to a tough double transposition. Answers are at the bottom.
5. Ciphers·18 Oct

   Orbit before breakfast

   Ten short space puzzles about the ISS and its orbit, from the phonetic alphabet up to an autokey closer. Answers are at the bottom.
6. Ciphers·17 Oct

   The Nullarbor straight

   Ten short puzzles about the Nullarbor railway, from tap code up to a four-square closer. Answers are at the bottom.
7. Ciphers·16 Oct

   Silicon in the sand

   ASCII hex, affine and a Nihilist to finish. Ten in all, with answers below the fold.
8. Ciphers·15 Oct

   Room 40 reads the mail

   Ten short puzzles about Room 40, the British codebreakers of WWI, from a number code up to an ADFGX closer. Answers are at the bottom.
9. Ciphers·3 Oct

   Four couriers, four dead drops: a spy logic puzzle

   A hard spy logic puzzle. Four couriers each make one dead drop at a set time and place, and ten clues pin down exactly one answer.
10. Ciphers·3 Oct

    A mini crossword on the language of spying

    A medium mini crossword on the language of spying. Nine clues, and every answer is a word a case officer would use without blinking.
11. Ciphers·3 Oct

    Ten words from Cold War Berlin, hidden in a grid

    A find-a-word with ten Cold War Berlin words, from Checkpoint to Stasi. The leftover letters spell what happened on one bridge in 1962.
12. Ciphers·3 Oct

    Crack the Vigenère note a courier left on the ferry

    A medium Vigenère cipher. One courier note, one eight-letter keyword you have to work out from a clue, and a plain instruction underneath.
13. Ciphers·3 Oct

    Seven quick questions on spies, satellites and Australia

    A medium quick-fire quiz with seven questions on Australian intelligence, spy satellites and computing, from Pine Gap to CSIRAC.
14. Ciphers·10 Sept

    Entry exam on the night desk

    Five locks at the raised bar: tradecraft logic, a crossword, a find-a-word, Playfair, and a Cardano grille. Answers folded. They stay on the paper.
15. Ciphers·2 Sept

    Tumblers on gold

    Four short locks for Wednesday on The Gold Standard. ROT13, a two-word cross, Morse, and a hex dump.
16. Ciphers·31 Aug

    Four new locks

    A rail fence, a tiny cross, Morse, and A-is-1. A fresh set.
17. Ciphers·31 Aug

    Four more for the night desk

    Caesar, a tiny cross, a letter matrix, and more hex. Still short.
18. Ciphers·31 Aug

    Four for the first night

    A cryptogram, a mini crossword, a letter matrix, and a hex dump. None of them long.
19. Ciphers·30 Aug

    Fraction on the pad

    Medium–hard. ADFGX. Five-by-five fractionated Morse-style grid, then the pairs as letters A D F G X.
20. Ciphers·30 Aug

    Nihilist on the rail

    Hard. Nihilist: Polybius numbers plus a repeating key. Key RAIL. I/J share.

Say hello in our guest book