Beyond Rankers Academy
Building Minds, Not Just Rankers
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Beyond Rankers Academy
Building Minds, Not Just Rankers
Main site →
A secret message is just normal words wearing a disguise 🕵️. Your job is to find the rule of the disguise. Once you know the rule, you can write secret messages of your own!
Almost every coding question needs this. Each letter has a position number. Learn it once and you will never be stuck again.
You only need to remember five letters. Every fifth letter spells the funny word E-J-O-T-Y. Then just hop forwards or backwards.
E
5
J
10
O
15
T
20
Y
25
Example: what is the position of R? The nearest anchor is T = 20. R is two letters before T, so R = 20 − 2 = 18. Done in two seconds!
🔄 Counting backwards (from Z)
Sometimes a question asks for the position from the end. There is a simple formula:
position from the end = 27 − position from the start
Example: D is 4th from the start, so it is 27 − 4 = 23rd from the end. Check: Z is 1st from the end and 26 from the start → 27 − 26 = 1 ✅
In a shift code, every letter takes the same number of steps along the alphabet.
C A T → D B U
C→D, A→B, T→U — every letter moved 1 step forward.
How to find the shift: compare just the first letter of both words. Then check with a second letter to be sure.
Cover the steps with your hand and try first!
Watch the edges! If you go past Z, start again at A. So Y + 2 = A, and Z + 1 = A. Going backwards past A, you land on Z: A − 1 = Z. Think of the alphabet as a circle 🔄.
In this code every letter moves 1 step forward. Match each code to its real word.
Here letters turn into numbers. There are three favourite tricks — check them in this order.
Which trick is it? If the code is as long as the word, each letter became a number. If the code is one small number, they were probably added together.
In these questions the maths signs swap places! For example: "If + means ×, then 4 + 5 = ?"
Method: rewrite the sum with the real signs first, then solve it. Never try to do both at once — that is how mistakes happen.
4 + 5 → 4 × 5 = 20
📐 After you swap, solve in the right order
Do × and ÷ first, then + and −, working from left to right.
If × means + and + means ×, then 3 × 4 + 2 = ?
Step 1 — swap the signs: 3 + 4 × 2
Step 2 — do × first: 4 × 2 = 8
Step 3 — now add: 3 + 8 = 11
12 IMO-style questions. Write the alphabet on your rough sheet before you start — it helps! 🍀