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"isn't this just a less secure Enigma cipher?"

Talk is cheap, my friend. I've described the algorithm and supplied some cipher-text. What's the plain text?

Seriously though, if you know what the Enigma cipher is without having to look it up, you're probably over qualified for this sort of puzzle.

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Well, the first word is probably THE. I have doubts as to whether this is broken enough in practice if you follow standard cryptographic practice and remove spacing and punctuation; the key space size is still 26^17, assuming "random codeword" means a random string of letters and not a randomly selected string of one or more dictionary words.

The key is 17 random letters generated using the password generator at GRC.COM.

I don't think I'm giving away anything by confirming that at least one of those three letter groups is "THE".

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