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Solution for Playfair Cipher
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We can use similar hypotheses and deductions to complete the square recovery to find that FINAL VICTORY is the keyphrase, written in a spiral:

	F I N A L
	H K M P V
	G X Z Q C
	E W U S T
	D B Y R O

Decrypting the message, we find the ominous message:

	MOST URGENT STOP
	ALL MEMBERS OF GLIDER TEAM KILLED STOP
	IN CONTACT WITH NORSK HYDRO INformANT STOP
	RED PENGUIN FRENZY STOP
	DO NOT SEND FOLLOWUP TEAM UNTIL I GIVE
	COORDINATES AND TIME FOR SAFE LANDING ZONE END

Since the duress code ÒRED PENGUIN FRENZYÓ was used, we know the Nazis captured the agent and forced him to send this message. It would have been a bad idea to follow the instructions when they arrived, since Òsafe landing zoneÓ would have had a different meaning to the enemy.

This cipher is an amalgam of several real incidents during the war. Thirty-four officers and men were sent in gliders to blow up the Norsk Hydro heavy-water facility in Norway, and the operation was a complete fiasco. Both gliders crashed, and many of the men in them died outright; the Nazis took the injured men to a hospital, where a quisling doctor gave them lethal injections. The Nazis rounded up and executed the rest of the team, even though they were in uniform. A later team successfully sabotaged the heavy-water plant, setting the Nazi nuclear effort back six months. Duress codes were in fact used and were very important, because the Nazis did attempt to keep captured wireless operators in play: The ÒEnglandspielÓ in the Netherlands, in which they were able to fool the British into sending many agents directly into their hands for years, is a prime example.

For more background see Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War 1941-1945 by Leo Marks (Free Press, 1999), and Set Europe Ablaze by E. H. Cookridge (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967).

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