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[ALISDAIRPARK]

What did you say in your initial email Berty?

[bertyb]

Hi guys and gals,

The original mail to Patrick said:

[padge]

[bertyb]

Could the bike be a metaphor for something else perhaps, or could it just be there to make the card box look better....

I will dig the card out when I get back from work again tonight......should get an hour or so on it tonight all being well.

Will see what I can dig up about the bike......is there anybody at the sentinel, academy or like that might be able to identify it for us once and for all.

Time to clear head and concentrate on work for a few hours......

[BBuck]

Nice one, bertyb!

[ALISDAIRPARK]

superb, at very least it gives us an idea of what the output should look like

[BBuck]

bertyb,

I know you can't replicate your results - I share your pain - but can you let us know about the approaches you've been trying to help point in the right direction. Specifically:

i) were you using a solitaire cipher decrypt?
ii) were you working on the 108 letters, or the 20 letters?
iii) were you using keywords, or just a plain pack order?

No worries if you can't remember, but anything would help direct the effort. I think I might have to buy this card now the end seems a lot nearer...

[bertyb]

Hey,

I was using the solitaire cipher at the time, but I was randomly placing different things in the different boxes.

I kept re-keying the deck with different keywords from a standard new pack order and was focusing on the 108 letter string.

At one point I was trying to decipher after shuffling once, then once more and so on, just to see what would come out in decks with high and low entropy, I carried this process on for about 3 hours including 1 ciggie and toilet break before I gave up up on this route. my thinking that there could only be so many ways of keying a deck of 54 cards so eventually something would make sense - but not much - as there is the other parts of the process to consider.

I am still of the idea that the disappearing ink disappears for a reason, as in we do not need it - but I could be completely wrong on this.

I think the phrase on the card about entropy must have some huge bearing on this, as all he had was what he told him and a new pack of cards - and from there he worked it out. So whatever is in that phrase and the cards, and possibly the box it came in should be the core area of focus.

I hope this new information leads to a solve.......I am begging somebody to get it right.

[Daffy889]

[bertyb]

If I get a chance I will have a play again tonight on it.

There is only the one site that people have found or have people found other ones?

The weblink I have is:

http://cif.rochester.edu/~la002k/solitaire.htm#fields

If anybody using something different let me know.

Thanks.

[padge]

I'm using the C++ prog which is on the PXC wiki site.

I seriously doubt that this will work but I'm currently running a random shuffle brute force on the outer 20 chars, and looking for anything with SENTE or KITEWAY in it. I know it's clutching at straws, but I might as well make use of some spare PC capacity.

Don't hold your breath though....

[BBuck]

I've tried the examples given on Bruce Schneier's site on the Java version of the cipher, and they all seem to work fine. Must admit that I had my doubts at one stage too, but this seemed solid enough for me.

padge,

good going (starting to feel very left out with my inability to code). I'm not clear though what you are trying: is it a random shuffle on the keyphrase? If so, what length of keyphrase are you using?

[bertyb]

Anything is worth a try, you might want to include variations on the word professor in there as well or even Djinn, worm or virus.

Obsession taking over again.....sloped off into a quiet corner of the office and ran a few of the test vectors through and they seem to be working ok and I no longer am receiving errors on page at the bottom - so I am hoping that this is a good sign.

My thinking now leads back to the statement made, and how that can somehow link to a passkey.....possibly an anagram or a very clever cryptic clue. Time to re-evaluate everything that we would have if we were the person in the bar that received that deck of cards and a few words and try and take the rest of the card out of the picture and see how simple we can make things.

Unfortunately I am not that bad (yet) that I carry the card with me at all times, which in some ways focuses the thinking. If I was in the bar, and got a deck of cards shoved in my hand along with a very bold statement spoke in my ear then this should be enough to solve the card - well it was for the guy in the card.

So in summary we have 2 major parts I believe to solving this card which can be broken into smaller parts:
1- The deck of cards including the letters on the side and the order of the deck within the pack and whether it was a brand new deck packaged as if it would be in the UK, and possible links to the picture of the bike.
2- The phrase about Entropy.

Just going back to the picture of the deck on the card, it has the gold line around it meaning in theory this pack had never been opened....unless it had been re-sealed.

I am starting to ramble on again - so will leave it there as could on all day.

[Jakeo]

Just to throw a spanner in the works, (and hopefully not to derail the thinking processes of those with more time on their hands) we haven't really talked that much about the back of the playing card.

In particular, look at the very centre of the card and you will see that its layout is not symmetrical. This to me seems a very strange thing for a card back to have, and I suspect it might be significant.

[padge]