The method depended upon putting enough of these clues together to deduce that state.
而他们的新方法就是，把足够多的信息放到一起，从中推导出全部的状态。
More precisely a core-position would be said to have a 'female' letter, if that letter's encipherment happened to be the same three steps later.
更确切地说，如果一个核位在编码的过程中，三步之后产生了一个相同的字母，那么就称这个核位会产生一只母鸡。
This was not a rare phenomenon, but would occur on average one time in twenty-five.
这种现象并不罕见，平均每25次通信中就会出现一次。
Some core-positions (about forty per cent) would have the property of possessing at least one 'female' letter, and the rest would not.
大约有40%的核位会产生母鸡。
The property of having a female, or not, would be plugboard-independent, although the identity of the female letter would depend upon the plugboard.
是否会产生母鸡，与配线板无关，配线板能影响的只是哪个字母是母鸡。
The analysts could easily locate all the observed females in the traffic of the day.
分析员可以很容易地找出当天通信中所有的母鸡。
They would not know the core-positions which had given rise to them, but from the openly announced rotor settings like AGH in the example, they would know the relative core-positions.
他们并不知道产生这些母鸡的核位，但通过明文形式的盘位（比如例子中的AGH），他们可以得到一个相对的核位，
This information yielded a pattern of females
由此可以得出一个母鸡模式。
Because only about forty per cent of the core positions had females, there might only be one way in which this pattern could be matched with their known distribution.
因为只有约40%的核位会产生母鸡，所以基本上一个母鸡模式只会匹配一个核位。
Here therefore was the new fingerprint—a pattern of 'females'.
这就是他们的新线索。
But it was not possible to catalogue in advance all possible patterns, as they had been able to do with the cycle lengths.
然而，他们不可能像归纳轮换长度一样，提前归纳每一个核位的母鸡模式。
There had to be some other, more sophisticated means of making the match.
必须要有其它更巧妙的方法，来进行这种匹配。
The method they employed made use of perforated sheets.
他们的方法，就是利用打孔卡片。