what kind of encryption is this ?

check this out for a paper enigma machine -

http://mckoss.com/Crypto/Enigma.htm

its a PDF, you cut it out and then you can use it, its quite good becuase you physically interact with the device and therefor IMO you actually understand the process of enigma to a greater degree

i2c

It appears unlikely to me that the proffered encrypted text, if it is written according to the rules of English, is a substitution cipher.

Why:

-In English, the only letter that exists as a word on it's own is 'a', yet in this piece of encrypted text, the letters E, S, L and W (in order of appearance) are on their own. In a substitution cipher, the original letter is represented as the same encrypted letter throughout. It is not possible for the letters E, S, L and W to equal 'a'.

-In the encrypted text, there are three consecutive one letter words that come out in an encrypted form as 'S L W'. Having three consecutive one letter words is not possible in a short, military style of language. Repeating one letter words is usually used in something like,
"a.....a........a.........achoooo", in creative literature. From what I can gain from the context description, this is a military style message from a game.


If this is not a substitution cipher, what kind of encryption is it, how does it work, and how do we go about analysing it?

That is a good point wheaty_bytes

However, you are assuming that the message is arranged laterally................supposing it is actually arranged vertically ...............that would avoid the problem you have identified?

:)

I know that this is a basic question (I am new to cryptography), but how do you figure out the spacing system? Is there one word to a line or do two gaps constitute a space? I am a little confused because I initially thought that there was one word to a line, but then I got to the bit where it says H_ _SW (if you read it vertically). Why have two spaces instead of one and how do you go about figuring out the spacing system?

Along the same kind of lines, how do you work out how many letters are used to represent each of the letters in the original message?

What you have here is what the US Navy refers to as a "KSA" or Knowledge Superiority and Assurance war game cipher. This is a very small subset of many areas covered under this title.

till now i couldn`t get any real help ?!

neo-1 sometimes you'll need to research heavily into crypto. The way cryptanalysis works is that you should know as much about the various common-place algorithms and their output patterns and more or less recognize what you're dealing with.

wheaty_bytes the spacing might be a result of a block substitution/rotation etc, like the Sandorf cypher might create. I don't know enough about this particular algorithm so this is just an assumption.