Divers find Nazis' Enigma code machine in Baltic Sea

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: Neilster

ORIGINAL: Fred98

There are 26 letters in the alphabet and 10 numbers. The odds of guessing the first character is 1/36.

If there is a 4th rotor the odds are still 1/36.

It's radically more complicated than that. From wiki...

"Combining three rotors from a set of five, each of the 3 rotor settings with 26 positions, and the plugboard with ten pairs of letters connected, the military Enigma has 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 different settings (nearly 159 quintillion or about 67 bits).

Note that (5x4x3) x (26^3) x [26! / (6! x 10! x 2^10)] = 158,962,555,217,826,360,000"

Indeed. I am going to assume that your math is correct. Not that it matters. The odds of guessing the first character is still 1/26.

Edit: Or with the letters plugbord added it is 1/36.

[ElvisJJonesRambo]

Maybe all them dials is just a fake. All the machines sent out to throw off Brits, and Adolf just used Navaho Indians like Yankees.

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: Orm

ORIGINAL: Neilster

ORIGINAL: Fred98

There are 26 letters in the alphabet and 10 numbers. The odds of guessing the first character is 1/36.

If there is a 4th rotor the odds are still 1/36.

It's radically more complicated than that. From wiki...

"Combining three rotors from a set of five, each of the 3 rotor settings with 26 positions, and the plugboard with ten pairs of letters connected, the military Enigma has 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 different settings (nearly 159 quintillion or about 67 bits).

Note that (5x4x3) x (26^3) x [26! / (6! x 10! x 2^10)] = 158,962,555,217,826,360,000"

Indeed. I am going to assume that your math is correct. Not that it matters. The odds of guessing the first character is still 1/26.

Edit: Or with the letters plugbord added it is 1/36.

I don't understand the point of the original post.

It's obvious that the probability of guessing a letter from one rotor is not good but not vanishingly small. I was illustrating that the combination of choosing three from five possible rotors and having the plugboard leads to an extremely difficult decoding problem. Adding a fourth rotor makes it much worse.

[Orm]

It is indeed difficult of decoding any message sent by the machine. And I have no idea what point the "original" poster was making.

However, I find it fun that the odds of guessing the first letter is still comparatively low. Not that it matters because proving that you guessed right is a huge effort. Or you have to be told the right answer. [:D]

[Zorch]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

Mathematical analysis

The Enigma transformation for each letter can be specified mathematically as a product of permutations.[18] Assuming a three-rotor German Army/Air Force Enigma, let P denote the plugboard transformation, U denote that of the reflector, and L, M, R denote those of the left, middle and right rotors respectively. Then the encryption E can be expressed as

Combining three rotors from a set of five, each of the 3 rotor settings with 26 positions, and the plugboard with ten pairs of letters connected, the military Enigma has 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 different settings (nearly 159 quintillion or about 67 bits).[19]

Note that (5x4x3) x (26^3) x [26! / (6! x 10! x 2^10)] = 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 ≈ 267.1