TOP SECRET
This report contains information about Potential Plus UK’s Summer 2018 Mission Intelligence
The Date: Saturday 11th August, 2018
The Mission: To have a fun-filled, code-cracking family day out
The Venue: Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes
The Teams: Clock, Bombe, Hut, Turing
The Challenge: Crack the Codes
Once the top-secret home of World War II code-breakers, Bletchley Park was the venue for Potential Plus UK’s Summer 2018 Mission Intelligence.
Collaborative working and persistence were needed for this mission as the specially-designed activity challenged children and adults alike! Thankfully there was no sign of rain as families formed teams and hunted around the site for the keys to the 5 different double-enciphered codes they had to crack. The ‘cracked’ codes remained nonsensical thanks to their double-enciphering and needed the fifth code to crack the first four. The teams then had to find their own ’emergency key’ to work out the rest of the resulting message, which was different for each group.
The four teams; Clock, Bombe, Hut and Turing, could only trust their team members; other teams might be sharing disinformation. If the going got really tough their ‘Controllers’ at the Mansion House could provide extra trusted information.
The Controllers led each team on a tour of Bletchley Park and gave the groups an Enigma workshop, where they had the opportunity to operate a real Enigma machine, which set the context of and gave clues for the mission. Families learnt about the code breakers at Bletchley Park, as well as all the other people who contributed to the work done there.
In any time left over after finding the solution to the final code using their ’emergency key’, code-breaking families were able to explore the site and the exhibitions on their own – the Bombe exhibition in Hut 11A seemed to be a particular favourite!
About the Author: Geraldine Glover is Potential Plus UK’s Community Information Coordinator. She is a Chartered Information Professional with a background in editorial work and information science. She is the mother of two children with high learning potential.
