unforum

[themandotcom]

[Nerd]

guy?

[josh shadowfax]

don't know if its been suggested, but maybe this has to do with the card number and suit on prime numbered puzzles?

[BrianEnigma]

[rosemary]

I've read through both posts for this card, and haven't seen this mentioned.
While googling away I found that there is a card trick used by magicians called a Chinese shuffle. This apparently looks random, but splits the pack in groups of four and five, and the magician knows where the cards go. I wonder if this is how the deck order is set, rather than us having to find a passkey. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out the order, but I've emailed a guy from an online site, and will post if I get a reply. Wondered if anyone else had any info on this.

[Teebor]

That sounds like an interesting idea, especially since there are plenty of shuffles to fix the card deck.


I was wondering if anyone fancied brute forcing this?

There are only something like 2.3084369733924138047209274268303e+71 variations I have been led to believe after talking to some programmers, the only problem is I am not a programmer and despite being enthusiastic, until I tell them what I want the program to do, I am not getting very far with the programmers that I know. Of course it could be a great opportunity for me to learn

[RedZed333]

[James Siegesmund]

Thanks, everybody, who tried out my backwards-working idea. Sorry it didn't seem to work.

Before this idea is left on the scrap pile, though, could somebody give it one more try for me? Specifically, by backwards-working the "Motor deck order?" I don't remember where it is in the two massive threads, but someone at one point ordered a deck of Motor cards and determined that they came from the box in (I think) this order:

52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 A B.

The order of last two (Jokers A and B) might be reversed, as there's no way of knowing which joker it Garnet's deck had a star on it. Thanks!

[32_footsteps]

You know, at the risk of ridicule, I'll throw out a couple of ideas.

Now, I don't have any clue as to how to crack codes myself; I'm no crypto. I studied French. But maybe a non-mathematical approach will add something.

First, I think the line "If entropy wins, outward looks should leave you cold." isn't about the code itself, but is about the theft of the Cube. I know I'm not alone in suspecting an inside job, but I think Shuffled is deliberately saying it. But I think that's all the line is saying.

Now, I've been reflecting on the comment that Sente, way back in the day, won a prank contest by exploiting a weakness in the Academy's security system. What do we know about Sente's attack on the system? All I've been able to find is what little was mentioned on Anna Heath's site. Maybe if we had more information on that, we could understand what's happening now.

The challenge is, who could we get information on that from? Does anyone around other than Sente know about it that's still around?

Finally, just a random thought... the Djinn worm corrupts a Perplexian key. Is it possible that the Djinn worm also corrupted the code as well? If so, being able to pick apart the Djinn worm could allow insight into the code itself.

[brokasaphasia]

[Teebor]

[Guin]

[fretty]

I was just wondering, If the card symbols are solely for the shaded letter message then what are the joker symbols for? They have no shaded letters. They may serve two purposes.

[Mindez]

[arnezami]