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[BBuck]

[bertyb]

The pattern is similar in principal, but I dont think it is the correct pack, too much difference with the detail unfortunately.

Thinking the word River may have some signifgance now, as it is a common term in Poker which they were playing before hand, and also links back to the bike on pack in literal translation.

It is possible that what we decode might be a in a foreign language adding another step to the puzzle.

[BBuck]

[bertyb]

I see your point.

[doomsdayred]

This may be a little off topic but isn't there a company within Perplex City that produces replicas of Earth items (i.e decks of cards) if this is correct then maybe some research into the company could reveal a clue.

Any ideas? please don't trout me!

[BBuck]

Am trying something else (again ) Still think there's mileage in the working out the order from a limited set of ciphertext, but to do it is way above my head.

Instead, I'm trying to use the fact (mentioned above, I think) that Solitaire is breakable if you reuse a key. I am working on the theory that the disappearing letters and the middle text are both the outputs of a solitaire cipher, and that either:

a) all 20 disappearing letters and the middle text have been encoded with the same key or
b) the first set of disappearing letters and the last have been encoded with the same key.

If either is true, then you can break the cipher because (A+K)-(B+K)=A-B, where A and B are plaintexts and K is the keystream. So you can work out A-B. Then trying out some guesses on the plaintext of one of them might show some sensible words coming out from the other.

I've set up a very simple spreadsheet in Excel to try this out. I can't upload from work, so if anyone else fancies this route:

[doomsdayred]

Don't derail your thinking around the code but as always I'm looking at this from a unique angle/

I'm stretching with this but just let me sound off here, with further investigation into the replica items from earth I found the following from the Sentinal.

http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/05/earth_artefacts.html

The thing that makes me think this could be involved is the fact that items cannot be transferred back and forth from earth and yet the picture on the card clearly states "made in china"

The store I was thinking of earlier is Earthworks as seen here:

http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/earthworks_open.html

As far as I can see there is no website for the company but I haven't given up on this yet. Maybe it will give us some insight into the motorbike.

[bertyb]

All seems like good positive work.

Will have a look to see if I can also find anything along those lines tonight and report back if I do.

[darklord]

Is it posible the deck order could be obtained by taking a new deck of cards and laying out a solitaire hand and then using that deck order(picking up the stacks one way or another)to decode?

[doomsdayred]

[zeelancaster]

hmmm

[darklord]

[fretty]

[XrayIan]

Optional step is keying deck

[BBuck]

I've now got the card, and the bike doesn't look like a Changjiang. I think to solve this, all we need to do is find the actual name of the bike. This is not easy: I've looked at around 1500 pictures of different motorbikes over the weekend, and can't find it.

I'm focusing on motorbikes made in Chongqing, which is in SouthWest China. Chongqing is one of the main centres of motorbike production in China, which accounts for, I've learnt, over 40% of world production. So there's a lot of bikes to go through. I think it might be the right place to focus as it would account for both the "Made in China" clue and the clue of the compass pointing to the SW. I've found a few that look similar, but differ in crucial ways to the picture.

This would mean that the real puzzle is to find the name of the bike. This would fit with other silvers, like Differently Lethal, once the type of picture was identified. There's plenty of websites offering trade with China which list 100s or 1000s of bikes (as well as made-in-china.com, alibaba.com is also good), and so it should be possible to find the bike, but might take a while to trawl through all of them. It would also mean that dictionary hacks would be unlikely to work, unless they included Chinese syllables.