unforum

[zaeil]

[thelayfields]

key to card

[ramsfan]

In the puzzles free with last Sunday's Telegraph was one laid out in the same way as this code. It didn't have the same number of letters, and I appreciate that 108 letters and the title suggests solitaire. Anyway I wondered if it was worth trying ROTs on these letters and then treating them in the same way as the telegraph, ie letter 3, then 2, then 5, then 4, etc. Is there a programme where you can submit a code and have it Rot'd by every combination and get a print out, just to save some labour?

[Gibbet]

Its an idea thats worth trying if only to eliminate it My only thought as to why it might be unlikely is.

General spoiler:

[DJ FreeMason]

I've read through the entirety of both this Shuffled thread and the last one and I didn't notice anything about it. I have to ask, has anyone tried talking to the department head of Cryptology at PCA or what about Iolana Dervent, who works on quantum encryption? Trout me if this has been tried.

I think I remember someone asking Sente's assistant and finding that Sente himself was involved and that might help but what about someone who knows cryptography?

[Smiley]

[chimera245]

Hi,

Sorry if this is not a sensible suggestion - but I was wondering if we could brute force Card Decks in any way - or this problem in general?

If there is - then I'm certainly willing to help.

For those who don't know I'm currently organising the brute force attack on 13th Labour.

[UKver2.0]

Although I've started running your client on a couple PC's for 13th labour, I haven't been paying too much attention to the problem. If there really is only 218 trillion possible combinations for 13th labour and it's going to take months to attack, Shuffled will take longer than I plan to live. The possible combinations are 54! or 2.3e+71. And that's just problem one. The calculation would be made even harder as we don't know if a passphrase is being used. If there is we don't know what it is. We also don't have a definitive answer as to what the cipher text is. So adding in all those variables to an already impossible brute force attack would be border line ridiculous. That being said, I'd gladly run a client if one were made available.

[Grizy]

Do the symbols on the prime numbered cards relate to this card? A lot of us suspect they do, but we've been very off the target on some cards.
If they do, we have about half the starting deck and will get more as soon as the next wave arrives.
Does that make brute force a realistic option

[Joe_the_OOF]

This is in response to a post one of your players made to sci.crypt.

It is essentially impossible to resolve a solitaire cipher with such a
small amount of text and no other imformation.

The standard attacks on this cipher are:

1. known plaintext

2. 2 or more msgs in same key _with_ additional infomation about the
plaintext available.

3. getting close to someone who knows they key.

As an aside, the character distribution would seem to indicate something
other then a solitaire cipher.

If someone wants to recruit more help, I suggest a post to rec.puzzles.

[anon]

[thelayfields]

We have half the cards/key

[oliverkeers13]

I really don't think that the words on the cards are anything to do with this card. I'd recommend that you try and work on the card before waiting for the rest of the cards come out, as you'll probably be disappointed, and there won't be as long to solve it.

[thelayfields]

[Jakeo]

I have updated the Shuffled Wiki page (http://wiki.incognitus.net/ppc/index.php/Shuffled) with the following paragraphs (loose description of a paragraph I am aware)

The possibility of brute forcing has been mentioned at various points. The potential for this attack to be successful depends on whether or not you believe that the card sequence is the Prime numbered playing cards (Playing Card Symbols).

The nature of a solitaire cipher is that it generates a string of random characters which are then added to the plain text to produce the cipher text (see Wikipedia:Stream Cipher)

Because of this, a cipher text of XDFGW RESDF could translate to both SENTE ROCKS and SENTE SUCKS. This broadly implys that every possible 108 character string can be produced from the cipher text, and hence brute forcing is not possible.

If you assume that the prime numbered cards are partt of the solution, then while this narrows the number of possible strings down, it is still likely to be possible to produce a number of strings that are a 'legitimate' solution.


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