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[Flashomatic]

I don't know, it might only be my card, but on the left side in the silver border, just to the left of the words

"while playing poker when one of the
players"

There is a small horizontal line.

It continues very faintly across the rest of the card.

I could have a faulty card, but if it's on all of them, could it mean that all the text above or below it is necessary to finding the code?

Someone let me know if they have this line, or if it's only my card.

[jenn2d2]

I have something similar on mine, but in a different location -- it's a printing defect in the silver foil. I think the original thread contained some chat about that, but it's 43 pages long ^__^

There are also some of the Shuffled cards (like mine) which have the back printed upside-down. For a while I thought I just didn't have the right part of the maps to line up.

[mfm2189]

New Deck Order

[BrianEnigma]

Re: New Deck Order

[the_fountain]

did anyone else see the piece by kate brewster in the Sentinel. I think there was some relevant info in it..

[bertyb]

Had noticed that - good point....mentions slightly different approach.....which I think is the key, means we are on the right lines but just needs fine tuning slightly....

[bertyb]

Just thinking out loud here.....what if we have overly complicated everything from the start and we actually have the keystream on the card on the side of the pack, and as people have noted, the phrase is forced language which could also be the keystream or could be what needs decoding....perhaps there is also an elment of anagramming to tie in with the title of the card...am just running a few at the moment with the obvious but nothing yet.

[mfm2189]

Bri, I agree the value of each card is given by Cryptonomicon/Schneier. What I was thinking with the order, was that the pristine deck is what is used to generate the keystream. The star on a joker is just there to indicate to Garnet he has to use the solitaire cipher.

I called a couple of casinos and none of them use Motor so they didn't know the order the cards come out of the box (although they did say it differed from brand to brand).

[doublecross]

I think that the fact that Garnet 'spread the cards out [his] table' before discovering that one joker had a star on it, suggests that he did not retain the original ordering of the pack. He must have deduced an ordering or passkey from the other information he had been given.

[Stratman]

In case anyone else was missing this, the ordering of the cards out of the box from a new Motor deck is in the wiki and earlier in the threads.

[locqust]

Think I agree with fountain and berty here, other silvers have had really simple solutions and answers. (well once worked out, we go OH! thats easy really!) The only notable exceptions being 13th labour and Riemann. I think that somewhere along the line we have complicated this and that its stopped us getting what is probably a very simple solution.

Little hard to go back and try again with a clean slate to it though.

[Bendover]

Why not step back and start a new thread as if the card has just come out. I have always thought that the phrase

[Austin]

[K`Tetch]

Just started on all this and someone posted a link to the rec.puzzles thread, which lead to the old thread and, to cut a story short, after 3 1/2 hurs and al these pages, i'm here with the thought that was sparked very early int he discussion.

bear with me, but we have the solitare cypher, thats what everyones pretty much admitted to. There is the starting deck for the motor brand cards, but then there's the name of the club. the 5 of cups. Someone else mentioned that it was a card name in Italian and Spanish decks, but I am certain I have read, somewhere in the deep and murky past, about how UK cards were suited similarly. When modernised, cups becomes hearts (and wands clubs, swords spades and pentacles diamonds), add that to the report of someone else saying the hearts in the background was slightly larger than the others, and it certainly seems as if thats a card that shoul be looked at for a start point.

It just seems like a coincidence for the name. After all, if it has nothing to do with the puzzle, why meet there? Why not a bar, or a store, or somewhere else where a pack of cards is similarly innocent.

hope this helps smeone. i've only just started, as i said, about 4-5 hours ago, thanks to a review on justadventure.com (I'd not heard of it before - despite having run events in one of the locations that sells the cards)

[DJ FreeMason]