The 1944 Bletchley Park Cryptographic Dictionary

- 59 -

PAIRED DAY :

(in Naval Enigma). Either of two consecutive days on which stecker and grundstellung change but the wheel-order and ringstellung remain the same on any particular key.

PARITY :

(esp). Oddness or evenness of a figure or number, of a letter as determined by its position in an alphabetic or other series, of a tele- printer letter as determined by the number, e.g. of crosses used to represent it, or of any other symbol having a position or character to which a number corresponds.

PARKERISMUS :

(in Enigma). A system of registration designed to show up repeats of keys or any parts of keys (i.e. wheel-orders, ringstellung, and stecker).

PASS :

To transmit (cipher or other messages).

PASS-ON :

(of call-signs). Indicating retransmission, i.e. either that a message is to be retransmitted (in which case, e.g. fuer precedes it) or that it is being retransmitted (in which case de, rarely von, is used).

PATTERN :

1. Appearance or shape of tabulated record of occurrences of single letters, bigrams, or other units or symbols resulting from relative frequency or rarity, especially as shedding light on the nature of a particular cipher, or on the relationship between different messages or parts of messages in it.

2. Scheme of blank (usable) and black (non-usable) squares used in transposition system and distinguishable from a stencil in not being reversible.

3. (in machine ciphers, esp. Hagelin, Tunny and Sturgeon). The sequence of active and inactive, or operative and non-operative, positions round a wheel.

PATTERNED :

Having a recognizable or characteristic pattern.

PEG :

(esp.). One of the metal pins on the rim of a Hagelin wheel capable of being moved at right-angles to the plane of the wheel to an active or inactive position, and so forming one unit in the wheel-pattern.

| previous page | next page | index page |