Enigma

MerickOWA · Post by **MerickOWA** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 2:59 am

In this challenge are we to assume that the enigma machine is identical to the one linked?

We're suppose to guess which of the 5 discs are used, which order they were used, and what 3 letter key was used to start the cypher. Correct?

Do we also have to guess at additional "Steckers" (twisted letter pairs?) Or is "AT", and "EN" the only two?

tails · Post by **tails** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 4:08 am

Yes, the machine is the linked one, and we have to chose the rotors and their initial positions. There are no additional steckers.

I guess the next enigma challenge uses 3 or 4 unknown steckers.

MerickOWA · Post by **MerickOWA** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 5:34 am

Ah, I got it. Thanks.

I had a slight bug in my code.

papa · Post by **papa** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 6:38 pm

The linked machine seems to have a strange carry over behavior. When all three rotors are rotated, this takes place in two steps and the second one is rotated twice. Is this a bug in the swf or did I understand something wrong and it is supposed to be like that?

tails · Post by **tails** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 7:05 pm

papa wrote:The linked machine seems to have a strange carry over behavior. When all three rotors are rotated, this takes place in two steps and the second one is rotated twice. Is this a bug in the swf or did I understand something wrong and it is supposed to be like that?

The Wikipedia article describes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine wrote:The second rotor also advanced at the same time as the third rotor, meaning the second rotor can step twice on subsequent key presses—"double stepping"—resulting in a reduced period.

It seems the swf behaves incorrectly when deleting letters, although it doesn't affect this challenge.

dangermouse · Post by **dangermouse** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:23 pm

This is an interesting video on WWII rotors machines:
http://www.khanacademy.org/science/brit ... n-machines by Brit Cruise on Khan Academy.

And these are the slides by R. Banach i used to solve the challenge, also with some interesting historic background:
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~banach/COMP614 ... Enigma.pdf