unforum

[doomsdayred]

[Phill4269]

I found this page: http://wiki.incognitus.net/ppc/index.php/Main_Page
It is interesting to see that you can download solitiare cipher software. It has an interesting comment:

[bertyb]

Yeah I saw that last night but thought it may have been posted by the kind guys at Mind Candy as an indirect tip.....having just been back into it and looking a bit deeper, it looks as though they are all stories written by fellow perplex city players here on earth and as such completely irrelevant.

Am now looking into the word "Shuffled" in Wiki and google to see if anything comes up. In wiki it says about different algorithms that can be used to order (shuffle) a deck....nothing useful so far though.

[bertyb]

[unrealt87]

I know this might have been mentioned, but what about different ways of shuffling cards?
I know the card says that they were unmarked, but for one joker with a star on it, but it says nothing about their order.

I was thinking specificly about the way you split a deck and then flake them together by the corners with your thumbs.

It could be something relevent

[Stratman]

Phil 4269 and Bertyb
Sorry if I have misunderstood here, but you mention Solitaire software...

http://www.cif.rochester.edu/~la002k/solitaire.htm

The above has been mentioned earlier on in this thread many times and is a Java applet and seems to work well (I have tried a few examples from Solitaire pages and all have deciphered spot on).
And yes, you can order the deck with a keyphrase...I have been thinking all along that this is what we are looking for.
I assume it works in most browsers and on any OS - I am in Mac OSX using Safari.
Hope that helps

[oliverkeers13]

Just so you know, the Perplex City Wiki, Tales From Earth Book, and any other player-created resources are not involved in the game. Mind Candy know not to mix OOG and IG, so won't. Leave the Wiki out of your puzzle solving theories. Of course, the resources on it may be useful, but there will be no hidden clues.

[locqust]

Just to ask the daft question

Has any1 tried using the solitaire java app with out a shuffled deck order? ie 1 -54 in order?
Reason I ask? Well if Entropy wins, ie the deck becomes shuffled and disorganised, then outward looks will leave us cold, possibly refering to the heat sensitive ink, or to the fact that we wont be able to decode the message.

[locqust]

Actually never mind that is a daft idea.

[Magma]

A work colleague who knows a lot about motorbikes has assured me that the picture is definitely a Yamaha, possibly a DS7 though if you look at the following page it looks most like a 250 RD.

http://yamahatwin.free.fr/yamaha-autre.htm

What may (or may not) be relevant is it only looks correct if mirrored. If it was, the name of the bike would read AHAMAY. Worth a run-through?

[Gibbet]

As the author of Tower_Of_Cards I can quite categorically state that it is not a Kloo but more a reference towards the card used for no more reason than i thought it would be amusing.

This is a ba-na-na.

Carry on, nothing to see here.

[ramsfan]

in evelyn waugh's handful of dust, the heroine's sister has a dog called djinn which is a pekingese. I'm sure this is of no consequence, but it's a nice coincidence.

[padge]

I'm pretty convinced now that the key to getting the deck order has something to do with bicycle playing cards (see www.usplayingcard.com). Bicycle cards are probably the most famous playing card 'brand'. They traditionally have an image of an old bike on the cards back. But if you think that this deck is in perplex city, and they are so much more advanced than us on earth, then an 'old bike' to them would be an old motorbike. So I think that they are trying to tell us that the deck is one of the Bicycle decks.

Bicycle have released a lot of different 'special' decks over the years, including the famous Iraq war 'most wanted' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most-wanted_Iraqi_playing_cards but PXC wouldnt use that as part of a puzzle... would they?

I still can't see the relevance of the 'made in china' clue though.

[bertyb]

I still think looking at the pack that the word that has been whited out in the corner is a major key to solving this.

As for the Made in China, I still think this either points to how a chinese deck would be arranged compared to a standard european or american deck. Either that or the text is treated in a different order based on the Chinese language.

It could also just point to which way up the deck is, so when we take the cards out what card would be on top or bottom.

Research has shown that playing cards originated in China - but were completely different back then - not sure how relevant that might be either.

[bertyb]

I am just wondering whether it is worth maintaining a central list of all the passkeys people have tried to save wasting time for others.

Anybody have any knowledge on how long a pass key is and what effect the length has on the keystrem generated?