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[Alixa]

Process?

[Guin]

finally have this card.

is it not wholly possible that if this is a solitaire cipher that the order of the playing cards on the prime numbers is the order of the deck and as such will need all the prime cards to be released? A solitaire cipher can be a shuffled deck after all

[JebJoya]

Hiya all

Been out of the loop for a while, but have written an essay on cryptology which could be useful to this card for people who have no grounding in it. It doesn't talk about the Solitaire Cypher directly, but starts from very little assumed knowledge to explain the ideas of cryptology (cryptography + cryptanalysis), and may be useful to anyone who hasn't got any idea as to what's going on... Well, enjoy, have a look, I hope it's useful to at least someone!

Jeb

Oops - didn't upload the right version - here's the full one!

[mobius]

[doomsdayred]

As I don't seem to be getting anywhere with solitaire I thought I'd try something completely new. I stumbled on the following page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_arithmetic and thought it might work but can't get my head round the logistics of it.

Can anyone see any way this could work with the 108 chars being the numbers and the remaining 20 as the answer?

[pheebs]

do you think mindcandy will ever give us a clue seeing as everyone in the universe doesnt seem able to solve this?!

if anyone catches a clue or 3 pass 'em on!

[anon]

Can someone help me on my latest idea? I'd like to take the first and second sets of disappearing texts and treat them as separate cyphertexts encrypted with the same deck. It was posted before that if two messages were encrypted with the same deck-order/passphrase combo, it'd weaken the encryption. I'd like to test that out.

What I'd like is if someone could help with creating some code that would generate 1.9e+13 combinations and run a simple test to narrow the results.

I have some people here at work that could help me, but only if I start them out.

This would amount to taking the two strings (EODMF XRUTH and FHURG IFULP) and advancing them one character (EODMF XRUTI and FHURG IFULQ) and then another (EODMF XRUTJ and FHURG IFULR) until all combinations have been generated. This will amount to having every possible ten letter combination come up for each half. And while this means that you'd be guarenteed to see things like SENTEDIDIT once on each side, the other side would be giberish and we'd eliminate it.

The test for each como could be something like, "each side must have at least two non-consequtive vowels" or the like. If I can get help on some of the code I can tweek it up until I get something worth running.

PS. I'm not asking for a critique on my thought process or what kind of crap results I will gain... I'm asking for help with the code.

[locqust]

Nice idea, bit of a brute force but to be honest I think we have exhausted all the other ideas!

Not sure how I can help with the code to be honest though!

(btw if you post it will get critiqued lol )

[padge]

I emailed customer services to ask if the text on the card is correct (because some other cards have had printing problems). Here's the reply

[hally]

yeah the one with xawju is correct

[Gibbet]

Erm, just a thought.

Is the correct cyphertext being used for the brute-forcing. I.e. rccrypt etc?

If not, could some kind person post up a corrected version.

Ta

[BBuck]

Oops. I've been too lazy as well, and copied in the text from page 2, which is incorrect. I suspect that most of us have done so. Serves us right.

However, I don't think that it will impact massively on work that has been done. There will be a typo within the text. It is possible that the brute force approach reliant on a keyword will therefore miss something, but chances are low.

[donstobbart]

I've been working on the idea that the disappearing letters are somehow relevant. I've tried to decipher them using ceaser, vinegere, atbash, and anything else I can find. I've also tried just anagraming them, and using them as the keyword to the main cipher. Mind Candy went to a lot of trouble to put them there, and I can't help feeling they are there for a reason. It would have been cheaper, and easier just to not put them there if they are irrelevant. I thought of removing all the letters that are in the disappearing text, making them "Disappear" from the main text, but was really barking up the wrong tree I think. Was seriously left with a bunch of nonsense.

Maybe what I have done will give someone else a brilliant idea about this.

Don

[mobius]

I have to agree with donstobbart, it doesn't feel right that the disappearing text is completely irrelevant. I just can't bring myself to think those letters are completely random and not specifically chosen. Although I'm racking my brains to think of new ideas that haven't already been mentioned. Maybe it's best not directly thinking about, I tend to have my best ideas pop up out of nowhere thinking about other things entirely.

[unrealt87]