On October 1, 2000, the leaders in the Cipher Challenge were Jim Gillogly and John Palagyi, who had worked with the EFF team (John Gilmore, with assistance from Simon Cooper, Landon Noll and half of Deep Crack).

Congratulations to Jim and John, who will receive the intermediate prize of £1000 ($1500). Of course, the full £10,000 prize remains for the first person to decipher all ten stages.

Later this week, I will be adding more information about this latest development. In the meantime, British cipher challengers might be interested to know that I am hosting a 5-part series for Channel 4 on the history of codes and codebreaking. The series starts on Thursday 5 October at 9.30pm. The series will contain its own mini code challenge.