GCHQ unveils annual Christmas card puzzle - can you solve it?

Spy agency challenges ‘wise men and women’ to take on bauble brainteaser

GCHQ's annual Christmas puzzle/
(Image credit: GCHQ)

As the UK nears the end of a year full of twists and surprise, the nation’s intelligence and security agency is keeping up tradition by releasing its annual Christmas card puzzle.

The GCHQ website says “the card is sent by our director Jeremy Fleming to colleagues and partners across the world”, but also invites members of the public to have a go at “one of our most fiendish puzzles to date”.

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Joe Evans is the world news editor at TheWeek.co.uk. He joined the team in 2019 and held roles including deputy news editor and acting news editor before moving into his current position in early 2021. He is a regular panellist on The Week Unwrapped podcast, discussing politics and foreign affairs. 

Before joining The Week, he worked as a freelance journalist covering the UK and Ireland for German newspapers and magazines. A series of features on Brexit and the Irish border got him nominated for the Hostwriter Prize in 2019. Prior to settling down in London, he lived and worked in Cambodia, where he ran communications for a non-governmental organisation and worked as a journalist covering Southeast Asia. He has a master’s degree in journalism from City, University of London, and before that studied English Literature at the University of Manchester.