Like many others working on The Cipher Challenge, we did not solve the stages in the order they are presented in The Code Book. Below follows a list of the stages in the order we solved them.
| Stage 1 | September 23, 1999 |
| Stage 2 | September 24, 1999 |
| Stage 4 | September 26, 1999 |
| Stage 3 | October 4, 1999 |
| Stage 7 | October 10, 1999 |
| Stage 6 | October 12, 1999 |
| Stage 8 | October 13, 1999 |
| Stage 9 | November 12, 1999 |
| Stage 5 | May 15, 2000 |
| Stage 10 | October 5, 2000 |
Notable is that after solving Stage 9, it took us almost six months before we managed to break the elusive Stage 5. If one considers that we actually had all the information that Stage 5 could require when we had solved Stages 1-4, it actually took us more than seven months to conquer it.
A more detailed description of Stage 5 follows further down, but the lack of success with solving Stage 5 was very annoying for us.