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The variables above give a total key size of 2.06 x 10185. Unfortunately, the Germans failed to apply this key space on RS-44. They only produced 36 different rods to print the rows. Also, the actual messages were mostly never longer than 60 letters, limiting the numers of rows that were used. With all possible permutations for the transposition key and start positions there's only a practical key space of 2 x 1035, comparible with a 117 bit key. The conversion alphabet for place names is a simple substitution and, although it has 15,511,210,043,330,985,984,000,000 possible combinations, can be solved with simple letter frequency analysis. This, of course, is only possible if the rest of message is already broken successfully and the grid and column order is restored correctly.
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