unforum

[Stratman]

To answer BBuck
I still have an unopened pack of Motor cards here and can confirm the tear off band is solid gold. However, it is 'rippled', something I assume in caused in the manufacturing process. This catches the light and would be responsible for making it look like there are 'gaps' in it. I would think that is a dead end.

[BBuck]

Thanks very much for checking.

I still think the patches of white are a bit odd. They are only on or above the gold band. Do you think they all could be caused by light catching the wrapper? I'm thinking in particular of the very large blotch which almost completely rubs out the top left motorbike.

[Sh1ft]

As long as we are documenting fruitless efforts, I have been trying to shuffle the ciphertext by dividing the 128 characters into two "piles" of 64 cards (characters) and performing a perfect shuffle.

Top character first perfect shuffling of ciphertext:

[kontan]

Hires scan

[kontan]

Problem with Java program

[Atrophied]

Uhm, you may want to remove that hi-res scan. It's somewhat a breach of copyright, and higher resolution than what Mind Candy allow for scans of their product.

~Atrophied

[sixsidedsquare]

While were throwing stuff out there, here's some java I made after wave 3 came out. It was trying to use the card symbols on the cards and forcing the rest of the order. I warn you it is ugly java, cut down to the most basic way I could think of doing it (i.e. something like 14 nested for loops). There are 4 files, covering a backwards and forwards deck order and decoding inner and outer text.

It didn't seem to come up with anything for me, but some of you programmers out there might want to take a look, I've bound to have made a few mistakes in there.

[gurupidal]

I must admit that the php file on my site isn't my own work. it is a link i followed from the Schneier site. But to get php to work it needs to be on a server. The file I downloaded wasn't "hosted"
If I remember back I think that Schneier had said that only one of the formats had been tested. Was that the Java Script one??

Sorry if it's caused any problems, I just knew it was "useful" to me. I'd found it quicker than the other scripts.
But Saying that maybe now that I know their might be a problem with it maybe it can be fixed.

[arnezami]

I've just had a (fairly new) idea. I'm not sure if it would work but would at least like to share it with you all. Especially since we are looking to "reframe the problem" and "get to the core" etc.

What if the problem is not finding the right order of the deck but the right order of the cyphertext?

A cyphertext (usually) contains of groups of 5 characters. We have been given 26 groups of characters (1 of which is only 3 characters).

Maybe we need to rearange those 26 groups so it will reveal a readable plaintext when decyphered (with no keyphrase or only a simple keyphrase used). Normally this would be quite simple: simply try all groups and the one that doesn't give random characters must be the first. Then try all 25 left over to find the second. And so on. (keep in mind that we would have many in-between checks so this is not a 26! search space)

But since we have 4 "garbarge" groups of 5 characters (which may be needed at the beginning) this becomes a little harder. Maybe this is actually the puzzle/problem.

Just a thought.

arnezami

PS. What is important here is that we would not throw away the 4 dissapearing groups before but after decyphering.

[gurupidal]

This may sound crazy, but I'd been thinking today. possibly trying to manually decipher it. Trusting computers to do it is starting to become random. The only thing I would like to ask is. If the code word was "cards", does the keyword just get repeated. ie CARDS CARDS CARDS (I won't go on).

AL

I'm removing the .php file I'm hosting as I've just done the test by using the sample off the schneier site. The PHP file is well wrong. Sorry to everyone mid deciphering, but I think it'll be saving your time.

[Guin]

Re: Problem with Java program

[BBuck]

Not sure if this is significant or not (can't think at the moment how to work out the probabilities) but worth mentioning.

If you work out a 108 letter keystream (call it keystream A) using EODMFXRUTH as the keyphrase, then there are 11 letters the same as in the non-disappearing letters (by way of contrast, using FHURGIFULP only produces 5).

In particular, the start and finish are the same. In fact, the start looks very close:

108 Letters: WBBMC HGFIB LXCQY WEZFL ITHPJ LFHWY ETKWY LJOTY YNGYJ BIOGI
Keystream A: WRRMW JLHNB IJWBX JMVFR ISAEW BHFQD SIACK BEFGP KJNCZ CEBZQ

108 Letters: FUVMR XIHGU RAGXH NQHRS XAWJU FJTAM SMMOS MVBAA KPGVV WXOVM YKZPL LUL
Keystream A: ULVJT OYEKM JUAAL KXURS ZNKCP ZAIZZ SCHLZ ROOEX OSELZ TZVBM SZTMP KLL

Like I said, don't know if this is more than random, and not sure about the implications if not.

EDIT: Oops. FHURGIFULP produces 5, not 2 matches.

[gurupidal]

I'm working on a helper tool at the mo for this card.
I'll post a link to it tonight as soon as I'm finished. I know that it was doing my head in and making my eyes cross. So as soon as it's finished I would like someone to test it out.

I've gone for a different approach to solving it. I'm not using java scripts php. It's more of a back to basics approach.
Email me or get in touch somehow if your interested in pre testing it.

alSPLATalpop.co.uk

[arcangel]

At the rsik of being masacred by far superior intelects, has anyone compared the order of the PPC cards as a way of working our the order of this deck?

for example card number 7 is the six of clubs

which sugests the perplex "deck" is shuffled
i know the the park of cards he is given is "all new and untouched" but you couldent use a solitare cypher on a untouched deck

i realise some of this has been touched on LOTS of times before, but the new cards (wave3) out might make the order of the pack clear(er)




happy hunting

[gurupidal]

First off thanks for everyone trying this out.
I've made it in full now, but I didn't get the answers I was looking for. I've gone with the idea that there is a keyword added to the plain text to give the reults we see. Can someone explain if this is possible?

My flash tool / page is on that basis.
www.alpop.co.uk/P/index.html
My idea was that if you add
CARDS CARDS CARDS to
SECRE TCODE SHERE you would get
Your cipher text here (I bailed on the full example sorry)

So My pages are working backwards from the coded text we have on the box. I have 2 versions one with the outer text and one with the inner text. So my theory was that by scrolling through the letters you should be able to find 2 rows of wording as my example above.
Everyone seems to be talking about the order of the deck, but I felt that that wasn't really the key as it was not set up.

So anyway this was a different view on this project. Please let me know your thoughts. And also is this how solitaire could be done, the more I looked into it the more I got lost.