SPY GAMES
You could be the next James Bond if you can work out the fiendish GCHQ spy puzzle designed to lure in new recruits
Watch the video to solve the twisted puzzle and be a spy
SPIES from the government’s GCHQ listening post have published a picture puzzle to lure in new recruits.
Brain-boxes who solve the riddle may have what it takes to with the world’s best code-breaking spooks.
1
Spy chief Anne Keast-Butler said she was seeking lateral thinkers who had “never thought of working" with the UK Signals Intelligence Service.
She said the super hi-tech service needed a “mix of minds”.
She added: “We're on a journey to make sure that we reach out and connect to people who've never thought of working with us.”
The Cheltenham-based spy agency said the brain teaser was designed to identify lateral thinkers.
The picture includes a signpost to Cheltenham, Manchester, Scarborough and Bude – which are some of GCHQ declared offices.
They have secret stations around the world and their codebreakers crew Rivet Joint spy planes that routinely patrol the Black Sea hoovering up Russian signals.
One was nearly shot down in Oct 2022 by a rogue Russian fighter pilot, according to leaked US papers.
GCHQ said its puzzle was "a nod to the intelligence agency’s historic links with code-breaking".
Most read in The Sun
They said: "It has been designed to appeal to potential new recruits who process information differently and possess strong lateral-thinking skills.
";Hidden within the puzzle are 13 elements which represent letters of the alphabet.
Putin's 'MI6 mole groomed to spy from age 5 before being planted in UK on fake hols…& sharing porn with Moscow handlers'
“The challenge is to identify those letters and assemble them to reveal a hidden message.”
They published the picture to mark their new recruiting page on LinkedIn.
They won’t release the answers until Thursday at the earliest.
It comes after MI5 chief Ken McCallum said some 20,000 Brits had been tapped up by Chinese spies on LinkedIn.
He said: “Week by week, our teams detect massive amounts of covert activity by the likes of China in particular, but also Russia and Iran.”
He said spies from Iran, Russia and China posed as recruitment consultants.
He said: “We think we’re above 20,000 cases where that initial approach has been made online through sites of that sort.”
Topics