“Enigma is the most difficult problem in the world.” — Alan Turing (1941).
Solved by Alan Turing in 1942.
what are you doing here oh uh the lady told me to wait in my office she told you to help yourself to tea while you were here uh no she didn’t she obviously didn’t tell you what a joke was then either I gather was she supposed to who are you Alan tiing yeah touring a mathematician correct however could I have guessed you didn’t you just read it on that piece of paper King’s College Cambridge now it says here you were a bit of a prodigy in the Math’s Department I’m not sure I can evaluate that Mr how old are you Mr Cherry 27 and how old were you when you became a fellow at Cambridge 24 and how old were you when you published this paper that has a title I can barely understand uh 23 and you don’t think that qualifies you as a certified Prodigy well Newton discovered binomial theorem age 22 Einstein wrote four papers that changed the world by the age of 26 as far as I can tell I’ve I’ve barely made par my God you’re serious would you prefer I made a joke oh I don’t think you know what those are hardly seems fair that that’s a requirement for employment here Mr Commander Denniston Royal Navy all right Mr Turing I’ll bite why do you wish to work for his Majesty’s government oh I don’t really are you a bleeding pacifist I’m agnostic about violence but you do realize the 600 miles away from London there’s this nasty little chap called Hitler who wants to engulf Europe in tyranny politics isn’t really my area of expertise really well I believe you just set the record for the shortest job interview in British military history mother says I can be off putting sometimes on account of being one of the best mathematicians in the world in the world oh yeah do you know how many people I’ve rejected for this program no well that’s right because we’re a top secret program but I’ll tell you just because we’re friends that only last week I rejected one of our great nation’s top linguists knows German better than beral bre I don’t speak German what I don’t speak German but how the hell were you supposed to decrypt German Communications if you don’t I don’t know speak German well I’m really quite excellent at cross word puzzles Margaret the jum codes are a puzzle a game just like any other game Mar they really very good at games uh puzzles and this is the most difficult puzzle in the world Margaret for the love of God this is a joke obviously I’m afraid I don’t know what those are Commander Denniston have a pleasant trip back to Cambridge Professor Enigma you called for me [Music] what you’re doing here the top secret program at Bletchley you’re trying to break the German Enigma machine what makes you think that it’s the greatest encryption device in history and the Germans use it for all major Communications if the Allies broke Enigma well we turn into a very short war indeed of course that’s what you’re working on but you also haven’t got anywhere with it if you had you wouldn’t be hiring cryptographers out of University you need me a lot more than I need you I I like solving problems commander and Enigma is the most difficult problem in the world no Enigma isn’t difficult it’s impossible the Americans the Russians the French the Germans everyone thinks Enigma is unbreakable good let me try and we’ll know for sure won’t we welcome to Enigma the details of every surprise attack every secret Convoy and every ubo in the bloody Atlantic go into that thing and out comes gibberish it’s beautiful it’s a crooked Hand of Death itself our Rens intercept thousands of radio messages a day but to the lovely young ladies of the women’s Royal Navy they’re nonsense it’s only when you feed them back into Enigma that they make any sense but we have an Enigma machine yes police intelligence smuggled it out of Berlin so what’s the problem just put the Interceptor messages back into the Enigma and you’ll get it’s not that simple is it just having an Enigma machine doesn’t help you to decode the messages very good Mr Turing to decode a message you need to know the machine settings now the Germans switch settings every day promptly at midnight we usually intercept our first message around 6:00 a.m. which gives you exactly 18 hours every day to crack the code before it changes and you start again five roaches 10 plugboard cables that’s 1 million thousand million I I’ve got it it’s million million it’s in the millions obviously it’s over 150 million million million possible settings very good 159 if you want to be exact about it 159 with 18 zos behind it possibilities every single day gentlemen meet you Alexander I personally selected him to run this unit didn’t you Mr Alexander won Britain’s National Chess Championship twice you’re not the only one who’s good at games around here touring we to work together then I prefer to have my own office you’re a team and you will work as one I I I don’t have time to explain myself as I go along and I’m afraid these men would only slow me down if you can’t play together then I’m afraid we can’t let you play at all this is Stuart Mingus MI6 there are only five divisions of military intelligence there is no MI6 exactly that’s the spirit Mr Turing do you know how many British servicemen have died because of enigma uh no I don’t three while we’ve been having this conversation oh look there’s another I rather hope we didn’t have a family this War Commander Dennison’s been going on about we’re not winning it break the code at least we have a chance shall we leave the children alone with their new toy all right gentlemen let’s play