unforum

[Mrwilf]

Just read through ALL the pages, and noone has mentioned the similarity with the enigma code. That started with a three letter key group then held the body text in five letter groups. To crack it they had to capture the key group.

Um - then again, maybe staring at the screen has mushed my brain.

[ALISDAIRPARK]

Not sure if this is relevant but there are no D's in the 108, also splitting the 108, there are no A, R or S in the first half, and no C, or E in the second.

[doomsdayred]

There's a clue in this somewhere, I'm sure of it.

http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2006/01/police_raid_dis.html

[doomsdayred]

Bernardo Holyoke was "Q" one of 3 people hired to steal the cube by "V". The three people were given codenames "Q","K" and "C"

The "Q" was short for the name Quercus.

[BBuck]

[Jakeo]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to this

[doomsdayred]

[BBuck]

*Ducks between fish being thrown back and forth*

Keep going on finding "C", which would be very useful. But I suggest that you switch to a different thread to post your results, as this is getting a little off-topic from the Shuffled card (though there may be links).

[doomsdayred]

Ok after doing this the long way round I have found out that "C" is Claire Castille. (Had I just clicked on the "C" link it would have taken me straight there)

So looking at the code and the name Claire Castille my initial thoughts are that if we over lay Castille on the code the most likely place is here:

[Jakeo]

My trout was aimed specifically at the article, which I still don't believe is relevant to the solve of this card.

I do like the idea that perhaps some of the cards are giving us a little 'extra' insight into the theft itself, and given that Claire has the skills to auth such a worm, it would be interesting to know which files were accessed. I'd be willing to speculate that a plan of the room where the cube was held might be amongst them.

I like the way you think, and I apologise if it seemed like i was being down on your train of thought. Its good to see people thinking outside of the box on this one.

[doomsdayred]

[Danives]

Well, some people have said about encoding the message in solitaire instead of decoding it. What I'll do is change a line of my coding in the program so that you can encode instead of decode...(if I have time I'll make a final version where you can encode or decode). I am at Uni atm, just finished a ridiculous class, so will be able to do it in an hour or so. I hope the other program I made has at least been some use to some people!

P.S. (sorry, the program has been very delayed, mainly down to Uni work and trying to get the password for the heshintranet, lol. I hope to get it up for everyone to use by tonight ) - 22/01/06

[BBuck]

OK. Trying to gather my thoughts on this one.

i) It's a solitaire cipher (not unanimous opinion, but majority)
ii) If so, we need the starting order of the deck to decode
iii) The disappearing letters are the ciphertext

The starting order could come from:

a) Card symbols on prime puzzle cards
b) Key phrase (based on motorbike, "If entropy wins..., or other)
c) 108 Characters in middle
d) Symbols at top of card
e) Standard starting order of deck

a) has been rejected as then the puzzle would be based on other cards. I don't think d) is right, as Garnet wouldn't have had access to these symbols. If e) is right, then there are a lot of red herrings on this card, and no one has yet been able to decode.

But if it's b) or c), then one of the two clues is a red herring as well. I don't think this is the case. Instead, I wonder if the starting order can be got either way - ie it's a keyphrase, and the 108 letters represent the order that you end up with. This gives two lines of attack to find it out.

When ordering with a keyphrase, it takes quite a few iterations to completely destroy the starting order of the pack. So it's likely that the 54 pairs contain some cards still in order. This might be the way to discover how they are mapped into letters.

[Langley Moor]

Right, have been trying to keep up with this is best as I can, but I may have missed a few things as work has kept me incredibly busy recently.

Hopefully this hasn't been covered and I won't obtain a trout for my trouble, but the phrase whispered to Garnet, "If entropy wins, outward looks should leave you cold." Is 53 characters, not including the speech marks.

I know 53, not 52 or 54, but the suggestion is perhaps that 1 joker has been moved, and we have to do something with this? I'm not sure about using punctuation in the pass-phrase either - remove that and it's only 51 characters. Ah well, seemed a sensible suggestion when I started!

EDIT: O yeah, the bottom line of text, ignoring the disappearing characters, is also 53 characters. Coincidence? Am going to try a substitution cipher on this and then apply to the top, so we shall see.

[groovygirl20]

does it necessarily mean a joker has been removed? what about another card? and that card is the answer?