27-01-2026, 08:21 PM
Quote:I understood Rafal as saying that a crib is a word which we suspect to be the code for a certain word.
Well, I haven't invented this term and I am not even sure if I am using it 100% correctly as it is some cryptoanalyst slang/jargon and slang terms are often fuzzy
But I believe a crib may be certain or suspected, working or not working, real or false (we think it is a crib but it isn't a crib) and so on.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The method they identified to work out the Enigma settings relied on the use of cribs. The term crib was used at Bletchley Park to denote any known plaintext or suspected plaintext at some point in an enciphered message. Effectively code breakers realised that the Germans were regularly sending Weather reports (in German Wetter Vorhersage) and could identify the ciphertext containing these words (based on the time of the day these reports were sent). Another message that Germans often used was the message “Nothing to report” (in German Keine besonderen Ereignisse) which was also used to identify useful cribs.
This word actually seems to have a hundred of meanings:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I believe that cryptology meaning comes from the colloquial meaning: trick, cheat, swindle. You don't tediously check by brute force millions of combination for the cipher but use a clever trick to get the message.

