Exercise 3: Counting Rotor Choice-and-Order Combinations — Possible Solution ==================================================================== This is a permutations problem, not a combinations problem — ORDER matters, because installing rotor II-III-I produces a completely different machine from I-II-III, even though it's the same three rotors. Choosing and arranging 3 rotors out of 5 available, where order matters: Position 1 (leftmost): 5 choices (any of the 5 rotors) Position 2 (middle): 4 choices (whichever 4 remain) Position 3 (rightmost): 3 choices (whichever 3 remain) Total combinations = 5 x 4 x 3 = 60 So there are 60 distinct rotor choice-and-order combinations possible from a set of 5 rotors. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ This is the standard "permutations of n taken k at a time" calculation (P(5,3) = 5!/(5-3)! = 5x4x3 = 60), applied directly to the Walzenlage setting described in the chapter's own Daily Key Settings section. 60 is only ONE of the four factors that combine into the chapter's full ~10^114 keyspace figure — ring settings, starting positions, and the roughly 150 trillion possible plugboard pairings each multiply this 60 further, which is why the full keyspace is so many orders of magnitude larger than this single factor alone.