Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), Scintellix, and Bio-Rad Laboratories are delighted to announce that the GEN Cryptogram Challenge: Cell Counting has been solved.
Donna Marie Noga, a sales administrative assistant at Amresco, cracked the code in spite of the misleading clue 12, which stated that there were more than 22 letters in the answer. Ironically, Donna told GEN that once she saw clue 12 “a light turned on” in her mind and she was able to come up with the correct 22-letter answer to the puzzle on her own: “Count with high precision.”
For solving the cryptogram Donna won $1,500 and a Bio-Rad VersaFluor™ fluorometer for the Amresco laboratory.
Donna describes herself as a kind of word sleuth.
“I have always been intrigued by puzzles and I am very good at word jumble games,” she told GEN. “Over the first eight to ten weeks of the cryptogram contest I was totally baffled. But the last clue gave me an idea of what all the final letters would turn out to be.”
The GEN Cryptogram Challenge: Cell Counting follows six previous online, cipher-based contests—the MicroArray Challenge and five Cryptogram Challenges (Elisa, Elisa Redux, RNAi, RNAi-2, and Electroporation)—that have each enjoyed great success since 2008.
Peter Johnson, M.D., president and CEO of Scintellix, and vp of R&D at Avery Dennison Medical, is the creator of all the cryptograms in the GEN Challenge series.