A team of pupils from The Manchester Grammar School (MGS) have proved they are among the best code-breakers in the country after coming third in a national cryptology competition.

The four boys – Naunidh Dua, George Jayson, Takao Ito and AJ Taggart – entered the 2017 Alan Turing Cryptography Competition, which is open to pupils of secondary school age from across the UK.

And their team, The Game, showed off code-cracking skills that would have made Turing – known as the founding father of modern computer science – proud.

Out of more than 1,000 schools, the MGS boys finished third in the country overall, an astonishing achievement, and were also the first team in the UK to solve one of the puzzles set by the competition organisers.

Naunidh is 15 and from Hale Barns, Altrincham, AJ is 16 and from Hale, Altrincham, George, 15, is from Whitefield, and Takao, 15, was previously of Wilmslow but now lives in Japan.

In total, MGS had four teams who placed in the top 15 with MGS team Men4s, finishing fifth, making MGS the best performing school in the country.

Tim Pattison, head of mathematics at MGS, said: “The boys are to be congratulated on such an incredible achievement; to come third in the country and be the first team in the country to solve the Chapter 5 problem is hugely impressive.”