Welcome to the final student post on this blog, fellow Woodard-ologists! Today was our final full day in London, and we know what that means – presentation time! It doesn’t feel like we’ve been here for over two weeks, and it is sad to see it come to an end. However, we had to have a little fun for the last day. Today, most of the class dressed up as the legendary Dr. Woodard.
To kick off presentations, my group (Jay, Josh, Kali, and Lilia) gave a presentation on hill climbing and simulated annealing. These are algorithms that are very helpful in deciphering ciphers previously seen in this class. We gave an example with an MSC, but they can be used with many other types of ciphers.
Next, Anya, Ava K., and Joseph gave a presentation on SIGABA. It is a machine that is similar to the enigma (which we know all about by now), but it has many more rotors and no reflector. This made it much harder to decipher, and was very important in the outcome of the war.
For the last presentation before the break, Ava H., Caitlyn, and Katie gave a presentation on the Dilly Girls. They were a group of women that worked in Bletchley Park, and they were crucial in cracking WWII codes, specifically enigma.
After the first three presentations, there was a break during which we held round two of the photo competition in which there were the three existing categories, best group photo, most entertaining picture, and best scenic picture, and a new fourth category for zaniest professor picture. Here are the winning photos taken by Anya, Makayla, Caitlyn, and Hannah, respectively.
After this break we continued with the final three presentations. First, Ella, Hannah, and Makayla discussed the history of the Japanese cipher machine known to the British and Americans as the purple machine and how it worked. Then, Margaret and Maggie brought to light the stories of Arlington Hall and the female code breakers that worked there. Lastly, Nick, Rhodes, and myself discussed the modern code breaking competition Kryptos, the methods for solving a Kryptos puzzle, and presented codes that we had created.
In the late afternoon, most of us participated in a walking tour scavenger hunt.
My group’s hunt was themed around Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty. Many of the riddles were based on wordplay which were very fun to see once we had figured them out. At the end, the prize each of us got (besides being “inducted” into a secret society) was a chocolate bar. The experience overall was very fun, although challenging and sometimes frustrating at times.
The other two groups had spy-themed scavenger hunts. This included getting many random documents from bartenders, and suspiciously opening a briefcase in an alley. One of the two groups doing this scavenger hunt may have gotten a little distracted along the way, but in the end at least one of the groups completed the hunt. We were even rewarded with a super cool pin that everyone was extremely excited about. We also got $10 off our next scavenger hunt, which will unfortunately go to waste since we leave tomorrow. Overall, I think everyone had a great time roaming the streets (and alleys) of London.
In total, I think that this MayX has been an exciting, fun, and educational experience for all of us. Although many of us are probably excited to go home, rest, work on summer research or classes or jobs, I think that there is also a sad feeling that is inevitable with the end of anything enjoyable. Regardless, I believe that we will all remember this experience and recall it fondly in the weeks, months, and possibly even years to come.
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