Who Stole the Book of Kells? Description and Player Evaluation of a Cryptography Game for Primary School Students

The Code of Kells is a team-based cryptography mystery game designed to build computational thinking and maths skills in primary school students, with players aged roughly 10 to 12 solving encrypted clues across Dublin to identify who stole the Book of Kells from Trinity College Library. The game uses Caesar, Polybius, Pigpen and Morse ciphers, and is paired with a short introductory workshop and a narrative grounded in Dublin's history. The work also evaluates how children experienced the game, using an adapted Game Experience Questionnaire completed by 72 usable participants across five classrooms in two south Dublin schools.

Participants' maths and literacy grades and their levels of maths anxiety, measured with the Abbreviated Mathematics Anxiety Scale, were analysed against nine dimensions of player experience using a multivariate analysis of variance. Sensory and Imaginative Immersion (mean 3.65) and Positive Affect (3.31) scored highest, while Negative Affect (1.30) and negative psychological involvement (1.49) were lowest. Students with higher maths scores reported more positive affect and greater challenge, but also more tension and annoyance. Students with higher maths anxiety rated the game as more immersive in a sensory and imaginative sense.

The authors interpret the higher-achiever findings in light of the link between maths and computational thinking, and suggest that competition between teams may explain the added tension. Limitations include the absence of direct measures of computational thinking, the lack of qualitative data from interviews or focus groups, and the modest, non-randomised sample. The authors plan focus groups and a digital version that would record game logs such as solution strategies, solving times and attempt counts.