unforum

[Macavity]

[justdig]

[Cinana]

off current ideas.
Can someone even explain why we would need a physical deck of cards to begin with? I didn't touch the cards to decode the jibberish using the disappearing letters as the keystream. Currently I am working on another brainfart.

Maybe someone could PM me the answer to my question, so this doesn't cause a big ruckus. Trouts allowable there ! haha

[Sh1ft]

The entire point of the solitaire cipher was that it could be implemented (albeit slowly) with physical decks of cards. The idea is that if you were somehow repressed (monty python hilarity comes to mind) a deck of cards, even including jokers is much less incriminating than a laptop full of cryptographic tools, or even a laptop with a software implementation of the solitaire cipher.

[Asib]

Having looked at the enigma machine i wonder if the bikes on the wheels give the wheel sttings ie 1973 into a i g c
made in china could be the wheel numbers 4 2 5 or the plug up as its of the side like the plugs on the sim- ma de in ch ( ina are repeats )
NWSE as key

leaving 2 reflectors b or c and 2 static wheels beta gamma

or reflector c with rotator settings of h i na

Could be a long haul
need the right rotars 3 of 1 thru 8
beta or gamma wheel
Reflector b or c
4 letter primer for rotators
4 letter key for code
plug up wiring in 2 letter pairs up to 13 pairs or none

[Guin]

As mentioned in #syzygy MJ[Lab has coded a page for shuffled on a request i made. I have been testing it and it seems to work okay.

The idea of the page is to generate multiple streams using different and viable deck orders when using a passphrase. He has also put the extra joker option mentioned by Bruce on his site so we can test that too.

Any problems pm me

but on the assumption that the pass key is buried in the phrase "if entropy wins outward looks should leave you cold" this will allow you to test keys against 4 possible (and viable) starting decks rather than having to use the one deck on the bruce page and to manually key the others.

http://mikesroom.org/shuffled/decoder.cgi

Enjoy

EDIT] CAPS ONLY with keys no spaces[/EDIT]

[mj]

If people want to look at the source code (patches are very welcome - as well as any decks you might want adding - only been coding Ruby for a week or two) have a look at:

http://mikesroom.org/shuffled/decoder.rb

It's based on the code you can see here but with support for deck keying, the extra joker ('Use the final two characters to set the positions of the jokers'), and the multiple decks.

[yggdrasila]

This is brilliant, guys. Thanks a ton, MJ!

-ygg

[yggdrasila]

Ok, I'm spending so much brainpower on this darn thing that I'm dreaming about it, and there's one thing I just can't figure: the point of the disappearing text.

I mean, it's cute and everything, but what specifically is its place in the puzzle? I can't believe that it is there only to see if we could figure out that it disappears. Any thoughts or theories as to its raison d'etre?

ygg

[Bendover]

If you have read a good part of this thread then you know just how frustrating this card really is.Some of the best minds that have helped solve some of the other silvers are stymied as to where to start the decryption or even to tell which part of the message is relevant. all in all this card is either so simple that we're too dumb to see it... or not.

[themandotcom]

[kian]

In regards to the disappearing text, I've thought some about why this is there. In particular, why are there 10 characters at the left of line 1 and 10 characters at the end of line 2? I have a couple ideas...

This actually helps to define what 'outward looks' means. If we had seen two lines of letters without the disappearing letters, there might be less reason to assume that they are really just one long string of letters. And the card's just not long enough to write them all in one straight line.

Another thing to consider is that Mind Candy probably only has one type of heat-sensitive ink. If they wanted to represent a gradient, in which the outermost letters disappeared the most (and innermost the least), then it would end up looking like the letters on the card. There's an arbitrary cutoff after the 10th character. For that reason, I think we shouldn't necessarily assume that the ciphertext starts at character 1 or character 11, but it might actually be anywhere in the first set of characters. (Hmmm.... this gives me another idea to explore.) Anyway, that would fit with the need to "reframe" the problem.

[Asib]

Had a mate over who is a graphic designer wondered what i was doing with a virtual enigma machine......
So i showed him the card
Told him my theory
Gave him my magnifying glass
he then pointed out that the number 4 appears below the top right hand wheel in the strip
and that all the marks covering the the top left hand corner of the deck box and the stip could be a superimposed image
I personally think its where the card designer ripped off the large price sticker but i thought it was worth mentioning

NOT getting anywhere fast with 4 wheel enigma

[Cinana]

[fretty]

I think there is definitely more to "see" on the card is seems that there is not enough information to support enigma but too much information to encourage solitaire.