Breaking the Enigma Code

Recently we sponsored Frontend NE, a free, monthly meetup about frontend web development, based in Newcastle. As part of our sponsorship we decided to set the Frontend dev community a little code competition.

We chose Frontend NE because it’s one of the biggest dev meetups in the region and features great talks from some of the best developers in the country. They also hold their events in an amazing and appropriate venue, The Mining Institute, previously the North East was a world leader in mining and heavy industry now it’s a leader in the digital industry.

The February meetup featured Rachel Andrew, a CSS working group invited expert, a Google Developer expert for web technologies and a co-founder of the Perch CMS. Rachel gave a fascinating talk on the CSS Grid Layout specification, one of a few new specifications that are redefining how developers approach layout for the web. Alongside Flexbox and the Box Alignment Module it will become part of a modern layout system for websites and web applications. You can find out more about Rachel on her website and find her presentation on slideshare.

As part of our sponsorship we decided to set frontenders a little challenge in the form of a code competition. The puzzle below was set by one of our senior developers and requires a number of steps to complete. There’s also more than a passing nod to World War II cryptography, well we are called Enigma after all!

Anyone who cracked the code went into a prize draw, first prize was an Amazon echo dot and second prize was a Metal Earth Star Wars model kit. The competition has now closed but we’ve included it below for anyone else to try.

Clues:

• Green blocks are binary
• Caesar cipher
• Google the answer
• One of the letters in the answer word is the letter U

If you need it you will find the solution here.

You can join the Frontend NE mailing list and find out about their latest events via their website or their Twitter.