Puzzle topic

[Curtis Vaughan (ACSS)]

I wanted to suggest that as members solve enigma puzzles to create a discussion for that puzzle. For example, whenever Midnight Enigma (ME) goes live, someone would start a discussion like "ME Sept 2025" under which people could then follow to get help with problems and solutions. Of course, anyone posted solutions should preface any clues, solutions, etc. with a warning.

In the time being we could maybe find a puzzle to decipher from this site: 

https://enigma.hoerenberg.com/index.php?cat=Welcome

Or maybe someone could post that KPH Transmission that recently happened to solve. 

Curtis

[Curtis Vaughan (ACSS)]

I knew there was some site where there were decryption challenges and I finally found it.

https://www.ciphermachinesandcryptology.com/en/challenge.htm

So I propose going through messages one by one. 

I'll go ahead and post the first one here soon. Hope everyone can join in!

[Bart Wessel]

Hi Curtis,

On 15/09/2025 00:47, Curtis Vaughan (ACSS) wrote:

I knew there was some site where there were decryption challenges and I finally found it.

https://www.ciphermachinesandcryptology.com/en/challenge.htm

So I propose going through messages one by one.

Personally, I STRONGLY disagree with this approach.

Drik's ENIGMA CHALLENGE now stands for almost 20 years, in which many participants were able to hone and test their skills by breaking ten increasingly difficult Enigma challenges for themselves, by investing much time and effort. Undoubtedly, some will have asked for help, or even teamed up (although explicitly not 'allowed') to solve them. But it also says:

Important Note: It is not allowed to publish or distribute the copyrighted enciphered challenge messages or their deciphered version on the Internet or anywhere else, electronically, in print or in any other form, in order to preserve the value of current and future challenge table results.

I feel that what you are now starting in this forum a) is not in the spirit of Dirk's original challenge and b) will spoil it for many who will come afterwards, because solutions (or at least: the methods to find the solutions) will be publicly available from this forum. 

In short: you will ruin it for everyone who comes after.

Best to refer interested individuals to the website, and leave them to work it out for themselves.

-- Best, Bart.

Op maandag 15 september 2025 om 00:47:24 UTC+2 schreef cava...@avantguardsystems.com:

[AvantGuard Systems]

Oy! Never saw that fine print.

Regardless, I was thinking there are other newbies like me who are looking for challenges to better make use of and understand our Enigma Touches, instead of them becoming ewaste. For me at least this group would allow a means of working together to solve the challenges.

Can't wait for the midnight challenges, but in the meantime are there other suggestions? 

 Curtis 

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[Jürgen]

Right -- we should really get the "Midnight Enigma" page off the ground! I will nudge Oscar about it. He is very enthusiastic about that part of the project, and has put a great mockup/prototype together. But there's also his PDP-1 replica to tend to...

Regarding resources which might tide us over in the meantime, I am not quite sure what you are looking for. If you first want to make sure you understand the use of the Enigma (real or "touch") and the historic crypto procedures, then you probably don't need the added challenge of missing or incomplete key settings. I.e. you want practice messages with full key information, not a code-breaking challenge? For this, I can recommend the pages linked below -- also mentioned in the Enigma touch user manual, see page 4 there for various recommended resources.

https://enigma.hoerenberg.com/index.php?cat=Norrk%C3%B6ping%20messages

https://enigma.hoerenberg.com/index.php?cat=The%20U534%20messages

http://wiki.franklinheath.co.uk/index.php/Enigma/Sample_Messages

If you want to go beyond that and venture into code-breaking, the links below may be a good starting point: A paper discussing the "how to?" and providing real-world sample messages, plus the solutions on a separate website. 

https://www.cryptocellar.org/pubs/enigma-modern-breaking.pdf

https://www.cryptocellar.org/enigma/enigma-modern-breaking.html

And of course the "Enigma Challenge" page you already found, https://www.ciphermachinesandcryptology.com/en/challenge.htm.

All of the above messages have been published, including solutions. (Although I believe there are still a few un-cracked historical messages somewhere om Michael Hoerenberg's site!) So it should be ok to discuss them here. 

Cheers,

Jürgen