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[Guin]

OKIES (oops caps) have tried a variety of methods this morning (4 hours in total!) have keyed the deck backwards, forwards moved the text and now Im gonna go sit in the bath and scream (actually get ready for work!)

I feel like I am missing something but I cant put my finger on it. the 108 letters seems to imply 54 pairs, but how do we associate them with individual cards - thinking back to COH we went way off the track and it was way simpler than we had put it out to be - there is no clear indication that these 108 make up anything other than the code.

The card and clues seem to simply show us a deck of cards, which we now have, this provides the order of the starting deck to which we can then generate the letter stream and the keying of the deck, we know that if entropy wins outward looks should leave you cold - heat the card the first and last 10 letters dissapear - seems reasonable to me - then we are left with the 108 letters which quite simply do not make any sense once deciphered using the keystream - AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGG

deep breathes

right need to get ready for work and then eat

[doomsdayred]

Guin, how did you manage to get that combo of letters "AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGG"

Personally i think we are over complicating things. The 108 charaters IMO is the message we have to decipher and just a deliberate coincidence that it correspondes to 2 complete decks.

The 20 heat sensitive letters can't be the message, again IMO after we get the name the remaining message would be too short to be significant, after all we know Sente was invovlved so is probably part of the message

sente kiteway = 13 characters including space, leaving 7 characters for the rest of the message and that must include at least 1 more space. Seems unlikely.

[AngusA]

I've been working on the assumption that the 128 characters weren't on the deck handed to Garnet but were added by him for the puzzle as he makes no mention of it in the text. But it is a pretty big assumption. If they were on the original deck then I would agree that it isn't the card order. Can't get my head around the purpose of the first and last group of 10 characters.

[Guin]

[cheesey]

Guin

Do you think then that the 'If entropy...' quote is only telling us to remove the heated text, and we dont need to use it as a key, or as any other clue?

If thats the case and we are throwing away the heated text and the 'If entropy' quote, the only information we are left with is the WBBMC...., the Joker with the Star and maybe Made in China and Five of Cups.

Now its gone from too much information to not enough!

[Guin]

Sorry long post btw.

I hear what you are saying Cheesey. Ive put my thought process below.

[anon]

Minor correction to your post Guin... the number of possible deck orders is more like 2.3E+71 which is 230,843,697,339,241,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 combinations. If it were 26 million I would have done it a long time ago.

But your point that it's not gonna happen is spot on. Not just for the computing power it would take, but also for the massive amounts of outputs that would seem to fit the puzzle.

[Guin]

[Stratman]

Just my TC
Like most of us I thought the Motor cards order would have cracked it. I join you all in a collective sigh...
I still assume we are looking at Solitaire because of the star on the joker.
Going back to basics...if the cards were handed to Garnet hoping the cipher was secure, then what we are looking for is a secure deck order or a secure keyphrase.
1 Secure deck order - If the deck was keyed first and given to Garnet, he does not tell us the deck order as he was given it. So we are left with Motor cards new deck order or the Solitaire 1-54 start deck order.
2 Secure keyphrase - 'If entropy etc' could be a keyphrase, but according to the Solitaire site it is too short to be secure. But if the deck were grabbed by the 'secret police', it is the only thing Garnet knew that they would not know. So it must be the key to the security, whether that be using it as a keyphrase, solving its cryptic wording (code as opposed to cipher - the card, Von's clue and Garnet's email may be using the words code and cipher very carefully) to produce something else, or taking it to just mean ignore the heat sensitive letters.
3 Of course 'WMMBCH etc' could be the keyphrase - it is certainly long enough. But what then do we decipher? Surely 'EODMF etc' is too short for a message. (SENTECREATEDTHEDJINN, I suppose...doesnt work!). 'WMMBCH etc' could also be a deck order, but I cant seem to get away from too many doubles no matter how I try to number the pairs - and it still leaves a problem with what to decipher.
I am sure, like me, you have all tried every keyphrase you can think of, all manner of deck orders etc. I am rapidly running out of ideas in which direction to head next.
Sorry if this was a bit long - just putting my thoughts together...I feel it is so close to being solved...so frustrating!

[doomsdayred]

I'm having a few problems keying the new deck order, does anyone else have one I can match to purely for reference purposes?

[Guin]

[Guin]

doing my thinking aloud to help us move forward here:

okies Ive gone back to basics a bit here based on our recent and and very collective sigh:

Bruce Schneier tells us:

[doomsdayred]

[GinGenie]

If the 108 letter string is a hint that it is associated with 1 or 2 decks of cards, then perhaps we have to 'shuffle' these letters to get the correct key or starting deck order.

http://www.jimloy.com/math/shuffle.htm

Its interesting to note that there are 'in' shuffles and 'out' shuffles. Maybe 'outward looks' is refering to this, though I still like the idea from upthread (not mine) that it is refering to the outwards/sideways facing court cards. Again, if the WBBMC sequence is the key and also pointing to association with a deck/decks of cards, then perhaps we should leave out out particular bits of the sequence relating to the outward/sideways facing courtcards.

[Guin]