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 Forum index » Diversions » Perplex City Puzzle Cards » PXC: Silver Puzzle Cards
[LOCKED] [Puzzle] #243 Silver - Shuffled
Moderators: AnthraX101, bagsbee, BrianEnigma, cassandra, Giskard, lhall, Mikeyj, myf, poozle, RobMagus, xnbomb
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timair
Boot


Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 46
Location: Cambridge-UK 69/333

 		I'm just thinking aloud here rather than actually getting anywhere, but maybe my ramblings below will jolt someone who knows that they are doing....!


Is it significant that the spoken message "If entropy wins ..." is 52 characters long the same as the number of normal cards in a deck.
Its 53 characters long if you include the "." (period) at the end. This would be the same as the normal cards and the one marked joker mentioned in the text.

The jumbled letters are 108 characters i.e. 2 x 54 ignoring the 2x10 heat sensitive characters

the Schneir site says:
Quote:
3. Use a passphrase to order the deck. This method uses the Solitaire algorithm to create an initial deck ordering. Both the sender and receiver share a passphrase. (For example, "SECRET KEY.") Start with the deck in a fixed order; lowest card to highest card, in bridge suits, followed by the A and then the B joker. Perform the Solitaire operation, but instead of Step 5, do another count cut based on the first character of the passphrase (19, in this example). In other words, do step 4 a second time, using 19 as the cut number instead of the last card. Remember to put the top cards just above the bottom card in the deck, as before.

Repeat the five steps of the Solitaire algorithm once for each character of the key. That is, the second time through the Solitaire steps use the second character of the key, the third time through use the third character, etc.

Optional step: (This is NOT used in the examples below.) Use the final two characters to set the positions of the jokers. If the second to last character is a G (a 7), put the A joker after the seventh card. If the last character is a T (a 20), put the B joker after the twentieth card.


That optional step is intersting; because with a 52 character key I think you'd be explicitly setting the order of all 54 cards.



I think the picture on the card showing a deck of cards still in its cellophane wrapper could be important; it could signify that we have to start with an unkeyed deck, and key it with some of the info on the card.

For keying a desk the site suggests:

Quote:
2. Use a bridge ordering. A description of a set of bridge hands that you might see in a newspaper or a bridge book is about a 95-bit key. Agree on a way to take the bridge-hand diagram and convert it into an ordering of the deck. Then agree on a way to put the two jokers into the deck. (One obvious one is to put the A joker after the first card mentioned in the text, and the B joker after the second card mentioned in the text.)


The text on the card mentions the "5 of cups" so maybe a joker goes here.


However it is possible (but unlikely) that the deck was given to the narrator in a predetermined order - and the narrator preserved it and used it do decode the phrase "if entropy wins....".

If the ordered deck is passed from the sender to the receiver then they don't need to know a passphrase or key, they just need to run the algorithm on the encrypted text.

If this is the case then the jumbled characters could be how we work out the order of the cards in the deck rather than being the encrypted message, and the phrase "if entropy wins..." is the encrypted text.





What is the significance of the 2 lots of 10 heat sensitive characters?
I'm not sure if these (or indeed the other jumbled characters) would have been on the deck of cards (in the story) that was given to the narrator, or whether they are just there for us poor souls trying to solve this one.

If they were on the deck of cards in the story then they'd be invisible at first from the wamth of the characters' hands, but would then have come into view later as the deck cooled down.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 8:34 pm
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cheesey
Boot

Joined: 23 Nov 2005
Posts: 24

 		Hi

Poker can sometimes use one joker only as a wild card, making the pack 53. They cannot be playing Texas Holdem for example as you cant 'cash out'

So if we convert Ace to King into numbers 1 - 13. 4 sets will give us 52 plus one joker.

Also we know that 'If entropy wins, outward looks should leave you cold' is 52 characters long including spaces

If we use the the joker for the spaces, we will have something like

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 . . .
I F * E N T R O P Y * W I N S * O U T W A R D . . .

and so on, or it could be changed for the comma as the wild card.

On the other hand IF ENTROPY WINS is 13 charcters long, which could be entered as the key.

I think the second part if the quote just refers to the 'heated' outer parts of the encrypted message disappearing to leave the cold part of the message.

This is about as far as I got because there is more than one instance of some of the letters in our new alphabet.

Is someone able to use their encryption methods on this - my powers are not good.

second thought
I started to think about how 5 of cups fits in. This was traditionally a Tarot card, and cups has been replaced by hearts. The joker was also The Fool in Tarot, but still cannot see a connection overall. Im sure we can find links anywhere - Tarot has links to Mars too but dont even go there!
Also Made in China - could be Chinese cards.... noooo stop me now. Twisted Evil


Im starting to lose it now - hope it helped not hindered, confused or baffled.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 6:10 pm
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beglee
Decorated


Joined: 21 Oct 2005
Posts: 164
cheesey wrote:
On the other hand IF ENTROPY WINS is 13 charcters long, which could be entered as the key.

I tried "IFENTROPYWINS" as the key with no success
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 11:33 am
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Reason
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Joined: 18 Feb 2005
Posts: 408
Location: West London

 		Just a thought on Entropy; Inari Ekeba wrote a book entitled 'Entropy'...

http://wiki.incognitus.net/ppc/index.php/Inari_Ekeba

I'm not suggesting anything, just adding some trivia Wink
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 9:25 am
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beglee
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Joined: 21 Oct 2005
Posts: 164
Reason wrote:
Just a thought on Entropy; Inari Ekeba wrote a book entitled 'Entropy'

i noticed this as well about a week ago, and was hoping to email her to see if she could provide any help. But alas i couldn't find an email address, and any i tried got returned by the academy's mailer-daemon Sad
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 10:20 am
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bertyb
Veteran

Joined: 28 Nov 2005
Posts: 128
Location: London

 		This really is doing my nut in......

I feel like it is so close yet just missing 1 thing somewhere in this card....

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!
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Intriguing!!

PostPosted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 6:36 pm
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locqust
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Joined: 14 Oct 2005
Posts: 545
Location: Gloucestershire UK
bertyb wrote:
This really is doing my nut in......

I feel like it is so close yet just missing 1 thing somewhere in this card....

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!


Welcome to Perplexcity! Very Happy
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 6:38 pm
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rose-nli
Guest


 		mark on card margin
I happen to have two of these cards (trade anyone?) Anyway, while looking carefully at the margins for black dots, such as the ones that appear on the Riemann cards -or at least some of them - I noticed a straight line on the bottom running vertically from the print through the edge of the margin. It doesn't seem to be in the same location on each card 0 but it is close to the botton left hand corner.

I checked my other silvers and none of them seem to have the line.

PostPosted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 6:02 pm
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poozleModerator
Entrenched

Joined: 15 Aug 2005
Posts: 1090

 		Re: mark on card margin
The straight line has been mentioned on a few silver cards before (and this one a few pages back I think) but I seem to remember it being accounted to a production error.

PostPosted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 6:18 pm
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beglee
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Joined: 21 Oct 2005
Posts: 164

 		I got this card the other day. Looking at it, it seems as though the 'bike' on the pack of cards is quite prominent, and nobody has been giving it much attention on these forums. But, it looks too prominent a thing to overlook and surely is a clue to decrypting the message. It's a classic motorbike of some kind. After googling around for pics of classic motorbikes, the bikes that look the closest to the one on the card are
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Honda or Kawasaki, but i couldn't nail down the exact model or year. It looks pretty old on the card. If someone could work out exactly what make/model/year etc this bike is, it might help us to solve the card or it might be the keyword for keying the deck.


Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Another thought i had is that it's a chinese made motorbike from the "Made in China" written on the pack of the deck. Haven't any luck finding a chinese bike that looks like the one on the card, though, yet

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 6:23 pm
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ramsfan
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Joined: 07 Sep 2005
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Location: holmfirth, yorks

 		thinking along similar lines. norton roadster comes close but the exhaust isn't quite right. does have 8 letters (as does fastback) but no link to made in china. I tried hongkong in solitaire, cos made in china's alternatives used to be made in hong kong and foreign made, but no luck, which may just be my incompetence.
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 10:16 am
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locqust
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Joined: 14 Oct 2005
Posts: 545
Location: Gloucestershire UK

 		Ok Im still convinced that the Joker marked with a star is more significant than just the solitaire cipher. On that basis I looked at poker rules and phrases (Garnet being in a poker club it made a bit of sense) Anyway the name for a joker in California clubs is "man with a star" or "nose picker". I thought the first one was more helpful really!

I tried them in the decrypter program and they dont work (yes I tried both) but I think this is a track worth pursuing.....somehow Confused
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 4:26 pm
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Sabrewulf
Greenhorn

Joined: 05 Dec 2005
Posts: 3

 		Tell me if i'm going wrong
I have read with great interest the posts on this card and am sure the code can be cracked on its own. I have thought far outside the box on this one, so bear with me...........

Jack Nicholson popped into my head being the Joker in Batman, and does he not end up with an eye patch in one of his films (one-eyed jack!). Now looking further back in his film history he has a strong link with a certain director who worked on Easy Riders (motorbike reference) and he worked with him on a film called Five Easy Pieces. I got too far into this I think but this may be a link to 'Five of Cups' and the famous finishing line in the film is "where we're going its gonna get colder than hell".

Lots of pointless links i'm sure but Jack's character was a talented classical pianist, now could any of the code be related to piano keys or music as in 'Homage to a Glass'. (i'm not musically minded)

To be honest i think i found coincedences quite easily, but a fresh perspective on this riddle might help some guys out. I know you lot have helped me out quite a bit so far.

PostPosted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 7:44 pm
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ramsfan
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Location: holmfirth, yorks

 		It's always helpful to have a fresh take. Because of Homage in Glass, and the fact that there are 16 items (0-9 and A-F) I'd also wondered about musical notes, but hadn't the appetite to try. This game is stopping me doing my piano practice, perhaps it should inspire me.
Sorry it was of course Thirteenth Labour that I was thinking of.
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:30 am
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Mickey690
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Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Posts: 3

 		After looking through this thread. I inserted the first text string of the encoded message EODMF and an interesting result came up although i couldnt open the web page properly.

http://bikelife.co.kr/board/reply.php?table=market&no=13671&page=1325

It is a Korean website i think about motorbikes although only the header will open for me and i cant actually view the reply.

Just a thought maybe it could have some thing to do with the motorbike on the pack of cards

PostPosted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 7:38 am
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