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Queen unveils coded message at intelligence headquarters – can you crack it?

The Queen unveiled a new plaque, complete with coded message, at the GCHQ in London. Source: Twitter/The Royal Family

The Queen has showed off her playful side at an offical royal engagement in London, engaging the public in a good old-fashioned game of code braking.

The Monarch visisted the GCHQ on Thursday, previously known as the Government Code and Cypher School, to mark its 100th anniversary and celebrate the groundbreaking work its done in the intelligence field throughout its illustrious history.

The visit was a happy surprise for royal watchers, with the palace only announcing the Queen’s outing at the last minute. After meeting with Alex Younger, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Andrew Parker, director general of MI5, the Secret Service, the Queen chatted to veteran codebreaker Ruth Bourne and the current winners of Cyber First, GCHQ code breaking competition for girls aged 12-13.

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According to the Daily Mail, when the subject turned to scrambler phones — used to keep important conversations delivered to the royal household confidential —  the Queen recalled her father’s frustration at getting the machines to work.

“I remember my father had one, he used to get so cross when it didn’t scramble,” she said.

“Took some time to heat up and then work. The machines used valves, today replaced by transistors, which needed time to warm up before the equipment would work.”

As part of her visit, the Queen also unveiled a new plaque to mark the school’s centenary with some of the letters marked with a secret code she asked the public to try to crack. Later, she also released a second coded message on the royal family’s Twitter page, again prompting the public to put on their thinking caps and try to find the hidden message. (We’ve put the answers to both at the bottom of the page.)

Certain letters and numbers on the plaque are marked with dots and dashes that spell out a hidden message. Source: Getty
Certain letters and numbers on the plaque are marked with dots and dashes that spell out a hidden message. Source: Getty

Both codes proved to be tricky, with many members of the public taking to social media to give it their best shot.

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The exciting day out also revealed how secret messages were delivered to the royal family in the past. The Queen was shown the 1939 Royal Codebook, used by GCHQ to write coded messages that were exchanged between the royal household and government about royal visits.

It was also revealed that during the royal’s 1947 visit to South Africa, then-Princess Elizabeth was referred to as ‘2519’ and Princess Margaret ‘6101’ to keep their identities hidden from anyone outside of the tight-knit group that controlled security for the Commonwealth visit.

While the Queen always sports a friendly smile when on official outings, this one seemed to particularly tickle her fancy and she was photographed excitedly chatting with people throughout the day as she learned about the past secrets of the school.

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So did you manage to crack the codes? Here are the answers:

Hidden message on plaque: 1 Hundred Years. Secret.

The plaque uses morse code to spell out the word ‘Secret’.

Hidden message in Twitter post: “Hello GCHQ. It was great to be part of your 100th celebrations. Thank you for having us.”

The code is based on a reversed alphabet so Z=A, Y=B, X=C, W=D, V=E and so on.

Did you crack the code? Is it nice to see the Queen still enjoying her duties after so long on the throne?

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