Similar plain language messages and some decodes of crudely coded German messages, gave warnings to the British of the times, places and strengths of eight attacks of four corps or more, during the Race to the Sea and the subsequent battles in Flanders.
2.
Nonetheless, with his knowledge of the German language, he made a study of the decrypts and found that they contained stereotyped patterns and forms of address that could be exploited as " cribs " reliable guesses for the plain language message that matched a given piece of encrypted text.