GCHQ cracks Frank Sidebottom's codes (2019)

klelatti · on March 20, 2023

If you’re not familiar with Frank then this clip may help determine if you find him hilarious or mystifying.

Frank with David Soul (yes that David Soul) performing The Fall’s ‘Hit the North’.

mellosouls · on March 20, 2023

Frank talking about the Beatles (it's a little known fact he was a founding member):

djaychela · on March 20, 2023

Love the idea of padding out the real code with interlaced randomness. Is this something that is present in any other codes? I guess once you know it's random then it no longer serves its purpose, but it stumped them for a while...

eklitzke · on March 20, 2023

This is a common technique in transposition ciphers, which are one of the oldest ciphers used since at least ancient Greek times.

bediger4000 · on March 20, 2023

Between weird self bondage exercises and this sort of pop culture time wasting, it looks like GCHQ maybe has too much time on their hands.

RcouF1uZ4gsC · on March 20, 2023

Actually, if you want to increase innovation, keeping a bunch of smart people around with a lot of leeway in investigating stuff that interests them seem like a good way. Examples are AT&T Bell Labs and Xerox PARC.