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 Forum index » Diversions » Perplex City Puzzle Cards » PXC: Silver Puzzle Cards
[Puzzle] #243 Silver - Shuffled Part 2 (Read 1st Post!)
Moderators: AnthraX101, bagsbee, BrianEnigma, cassandra, Giskard, lhall, Mikeyj, myf, poozle, RobMagus, xnbomb
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jaikaiman
Boot


Joined: 08 Oct 2006
Posts: 55

 		A bit of lateral
Didn't Jack Nicholson STAR as the JOKER.....

Just a train of thought I was having...

Maybe some Joker sayings could be the passkey,

I just like the sound of it...
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 8:05 am
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Cabbage
Unfettered


Joined: 22 May 2006
Posts: 320
Location: North-East England, UK

 		Re: A bit of lateral
Freddie Starr ate my Shuffled
jaikaiman wrote:
Didn't Jack Nicholson STAR as the JOKER.....

Just a train of thought I was having...

Maybe some Joker sayings could be the passkey,

I just like the sound of it...


On a similar note, a thought had crossed my mind about the comedian Freddie Starr.

And then it crossed right back again.

Shuffled, beautifully wrought fiendishly difficult puzzle - Freddie Starr, dreadfully unfunny 'joker' - I refuse the merest hint of a possibility of the slightest whiff of a connection... nooooooooooooooooo...
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2006 7:15 am
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bertyb
Veteran

Joined: 28 Nov 2005
Posts: 128
Location: London

 		Have I Found something????
I have had a fair break from Shuffled card mainly due to the birth of my baby girl who is amazing - enough boasting though.

I have been catching up on the forum and going back over some older posts as well and went and did some more research on the Enigma machine which I know has been mentioned before a fair few times, but after seeing the reply saying is was an Enigma marinated in a conumdrum a couple of pages back I thought it might be a clue.

However after a bit of playing around I found a simulator that you can download - link below:

http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/enigmasim.htm

I downloaded it and had a quick play but havent spent enough time with it to truly understand how it all works.

Anyhow back to my point - Have I found something????

Like I said I was having a quick play around and if people do download it and open it up, you can click at the bottom to "Show Textbox" which is what I did, and then I started typing random letters and what I found was that they split the letters into groups of 5 in the text box exactly like the card.

Just wondering if somebody with a bit more Enigma knowledge or bit more spare time wanted to have a play around and see if they can progress it any further. I for one will be very happy once Shuffled has been solved. Since starting on Perplex City I have lost about 9 months to this 1 card.

Cheers
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Intriguing!!

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:35 pm
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kian
Boot

Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 24

 		algorithms
RE: the solitaire encryption algorithm... The thought about X's and reversing the key got me to thinking. However, rather than backing into a key, I've been trying to back into a starting deck order... with the aid of a trusty computer, that is.

I haven't been able to find a deck order that yields all X's for the outer 20 letters yet. But I have some 'almost' interesting results for my own amusement...

Deck order: 19,54,40,52,39,47,34,8,29,45,6,43,20,46,30,23,49,48,18,31,17,7,21,9,25,41,33,12,27,44,28,2,5,3,13,24,53,26,10,36,38,50,4,35,42,51,1,32,15,22,11,14,16,37
Ciphertext: EODMFXRUTHFHURGIFULP
Plaintext: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXBXXXXX

Deck order: 45,54,4,12,7,37,47,30,43,40,32,20,46,51,42,19,15,17,16,44,11,8,1,5,3,9,21,41,49,23,31,18,38,14,33,27,29,52,2,25,34,48,13,6,36,10,53,22,28,24,35,39,50,26
Ciphertext: WBBMCHGFIBLXCQYWEZFLITHPJLFHWYETKWYLJOTYYNGYJBIOGIFUVMRXIHGURAGXHNQHRSXAWJUFJTAMSMMOSMVBAAKPGVVWXOVMYKZPLLUL
Plaintext: SHUFFLETHEDJINNWORMGQDRIPSFUZBAELKAHFNPCRLXKTFWGHNTEGJNZIFCOUZSHCSBMWAWWXTWWSZWHNKRAQSZQKPSOCSVHSIYHUHGJJGIS

Deck order: 2,27,1,21,46,6,20,3,48,30,32,47,11,41,42,18,17,13,39,43,22,33,44,28,23,8,52,10,26,31,53,16,25,5,35,15,38,19,34,7,49,29,14,36,24,37,54,12,40,4,50,45,51,9
Ciphertext: WBBMCHGFIBLXCQYWEZFLITHPJLFHWYETKWYLJOTYYNGYJBIOGIFUVMRXIHGURAGXHNQHRSXAWJUFJTAMSMMOSMVBAAKPGVVWXOVMYKZPLLUL
Plaintext: THEDJINNWORMWASANQBVAAFAALJJNORSPVOHPAYDOKZMNSAMOFJWSNCCKLEYOQTPWMANQEBIPEWVKAOKBBUZMLOBWKCHFQFIPWZICMAENHWLVNYLNFNQYX

If only I knew what the starting text of the message was...

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2006 8:56 pm
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brokasaphasia
Boot

Joined: 31 May 2006
Posts: 26

 		Re: algorithms
kian wrote:
I've been trying to back into a starting deck order... with the aid of a trusty computer, that is.


This is amazing... what, in general terms, is the algorithm for doing this Kian? I just have not been able to visualize how to make a computer "search" for a deck order that yields a particular key stream...

PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:58 am
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kian
Boot

Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 24

 		John Holland did some interesting work at the University of Michigan in the 1970s.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
I've done some work with Genetic Algorithms in the past. This problem has some key elements; namely an enormous search space and solutions in the form of a string. I'm not sure why I didn't think of GAs sooner. It fits so well, it's almost as if it was made for this type of algoritm.

My genetic operations are limited right now. So far I've only used mutation, as I'm not sure how to crossover ("breed") two deck orders to produce a viable new deck order.



Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Before I started with a GA, I briefly tried another search approach... If you take a plaintext of all X's it seems you can continue indefinitely. That is, just start encoding X's and you'll end up with an arbitrarily long keystream. Then you can 'slide' the known ciphertext along that string and look for any plaintext that appears. The great thing about this is that it's a Markov chain. Any keystream letter only depends on the previous deck order, so as long as you remember where you stopped, you can easily continue where you left off.

Of course, I'm not sure whether there's only one chain, or many of them. In other words, will the chain repeat before you pass through all possibilities (theoretically of course, since there are far too many in practice).


PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:57 pm
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ixalon
Decorated


Joined: 12 May 2005
Posts: 238
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

 		Nice idea... I've not looked at GAs since uni, but what are you using as your fitness function? If it scores strings containing English words in the first 20 characters, could it be modified to score strings where the first 20 characters contain the word DJINN as even higher?

You could actually make the GA a distributed task and do a 13th Labour on Shuffled Smile

http://dgpf.sourceforge.net/
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 2:15 pm
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Macavity
Entrenched


Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 883
Location: UNSC Comm Relay Station Alpha, West Shokan, NY

 		Re: algorithms
kian wrote:


Deck order: 45,54,4,12,7,37,47,30,43,40,32,20,46,51,42,19,15,17,16,44,11,8,1,5,3,9,21,41,49,23,31,18,38,14,33,27,29,52,2,25,34,48,13,6,36,10,53,22,28,24,35,39,50,26
Ciphertext: WBBMCHGFIBLXCQYWEZFLITHPJLFHWYETKWYLJOTYYNGYJBIOGIFUVMRXIHGURAGXHNQHRSXAWJUFJTAMSMMOSMVBAAKPGVVWXOVMYKZPLLUL
Plaintext: SHUFFLETHEDJINNWORMGQDRIPSFUZBAELKAHFNPCRLXKTFWGHNTEGJNZIFCOUZSHCSBMWAWWXTWWSZWHNKRAQSZQKPSOCSVHSIYHUHGJJGIS


Shocked

Quote:

Deck order: 2,27,1,21,46,6,20,3,48,30,32,47,11,41,42,18,17,13,39,43,22,33,44,28,23,8,52,10,26,31,53,16,25,5,35,15,38,19,34,7,49,29,14,36,24,37,54,12,40,4,50,45,51,9
Ciphertext: WBBMCHGFIBLXCQYWEZFLITHPJLFHWYETKWYLJOTYYNGYJBIOGIFUVMRXIHGURAGXHNQHRSXAWJUFJTAMSMMOSMVBAAKPGVVWXOVMYKZPLLUL
Plaintext: THEDJINNWORMWASANQBVAAFAALJJNORSPVOHPAYDOKZMNSAMOFJWSNCCKLEYOQTPWMANQEBIPEWVKAOKBBUZMLOBWKCHFQFIPWZICMAENHWLVNYLNFNQYX


Shocked Shocked

. . . . Holy Censored !

Nice work there, kian - looks like you're on to something!
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 5:15 pm
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kian
Boot

Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 24

 		I've tried various fitness functions...
(1) Matching consecutive letters of a given plaintext string starting at the beginning
(2) Matching consecituve letters of a given plaintext string anywhere in the string
(3) Matching even non-consecutive letters of given plaintext
etc.
One in particular that I thought would be interesting: score each letter by multiplying it's probability based on standard letter frequencies in English. I thought I was on to something here, and it did end up with the correct frequencies, but no words (for the runs I did).

There are probably many strings of plaintext that can be made by selecting the appropriate deck order. However, it seems to get more difficult as the text gets longer. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any ideas for good fitness functions.

PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 6:40 pm
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ambskunk
Veteran


Joined: 18 Mar 2006
Posts: 77
Location: Brisvegas, Australia

 		Kian can you determine the deck order assuming the first set of ten characters is the plaintext and the second set is the ciphertext (or vice versa) and then use that deck order on the middle text?

That would give a shorter keystream which may be more managable.

PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:02 pm
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kian
Boot

Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 24

 		I've tried finding the order assuming the outermost letters are plaintext and the beginning and ending of the message. But by the nature of solitaire, I think my GA does a better job of finding the earlier letters rather than the later. For example...
Deck Order: 2,8,16,50,12,53,24,44,18,10,7,45,54,46,4,27,51,22,19,48,36,39,5,29,30,35,38,26,13,3,40,23,11,33,37,14,6,49,47,17,1,32,31,41,15,25,28,34,20,43,21,9,52,42
Ciphertext: WBBMCHGFIBLXCQYWEZFLITHPJLFHWYETKWYLJOTYYNGYJBIOGIFUVMRXIHGURAGXHNQHRSXAWJUFJTAMSMMOSMVBAAKPGVVWXOVMYKZPLLUL
Plaintext: EODMFXRUTHIIXDXKWAZKEJOKSQOZCTNEPXHZWRKWJMDFTISZRQWRTKOIUKSTIWYIGTIHPGBRUSDDTZBYITEMTUEKSKEVZCBOITTWLRUYAULP

It finds ten letters pretty easily, so unfortunately I think there are really a lot of possible deck orders for which that holds true.
I'll try ambskunk's idea when I have time... Life keeps getting in the way.

PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 8:41 am
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cwmajors
Greenhorn

Joined: 10 Jul 2006
Posts: 9

 		Should we be looking for 2 keys?
I've been following the discussion here for a while, and I remembered a similar problem that took years to crack: The KRYPTOS statue at CIA headquarters in Langley. (Look here for a ton of information about it. I would bet that many of you have heard of it, though.)

The solution to most of that puzzle (part 4 is still unsolved) involved a Vignere cipher with TWO keys: one that guided the rotation of the alphabet, and another that defined the order of the alphabet to be rotated. We're looking for, as far as I can tell, only one key. What if there was another keyword that changed the order of the alphabet, like this:

Keyword: KRYPTOS
Alphabet: KRYPTOSABCDEFGHIJLMNQUVWXZ

If you consider a pair of keywords, then we might even be able to use the disappearing 10 letters at front and back as those keywords.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time or the tools to follow through on checking this out, but I figured I'd throw it out there and see if it caused a brain-spark somewhere.

PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:33 am
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jaikaiman
Boot


Joined: 08 Oct 2006
Posts: 55

 		Messing with the Enigma simulator.
Have been messing with the enigma simulator.
I've been playing around with the Enigma simulator. It looks very interesting indeed. The problem is we don't know which version of the machine has been used (if at all). The choices are:

The 3-rotor Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe Enigma, The 3-rotor Kriegsmarine M3, also called Funkschlussel M, The famous 4-rotor Kriegmarine M4 Enigma cipher machine.

Also we need to consider:

Wheel order — the choice of rotors and the order in which they are used.
Initial position of the rotors — chosen by the operator, different for each message.
Ring settings — the position of the alphabet ring relative to the rotor wiring.
Plug settings — the connections of the plugs in the plugboard.

The Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe Enigma with reflector B and C gives a possible 5 rings to choose from. The Kriegmarine M4 gives a possible 10.
Notice these are both multiples of 5 or 10 (outward looks code perhaps?).

If we use the Kriegmarine, this then will give us a total of Four rotors...could these be set to STAR, or could STAR be the plug settings (swaps the S for a T, and A for an R).

Any thoughts along these lines would be appreciated. For instance, I have been looking at the card to try and find some clue as to which rings are to be used - 10 to choose from, 4 required.
I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, Beta, Gamma.

Hope this makes sense. Head over to

PerplexMe Downloads

To download a copy of this simulator.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:58 am
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kian
Boot

Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 24
ambyskunk wrote:
Kian can you determine the deck order assuming the first set of ten characters is the plaintext and the second set is the ciphertext (or vice versa) and then use that deck order on the middle text?


There are many deck orders for which the ciphertext "EODMFXRUTH" yields the plaintext "FHURGIFULP". For example,
16,4,52,12,25,7,10,46,41,38,1,40,32,37,20,30,22,48,8,53,17,43,31,19,35,34,28,13,42,44,21,27,29,3,36,14,47,39,2,18,51,50,11,6,54,5,24,45,15,9,49,26,33,23
However, any such deck order would yield the same first ten keystream letters. And those letters applied to "WBBMCHGFIB" would yield "XUSRDSUFAJ". No dice.

Similarly, there are many deck orders for which the ciphertext "FHURGIFULP" yields the plaintext "EODMFXRUTH". For example, 50,38,24,11,16,23,32,30,36,29,19,54,9,25,7,34,52,39,6,51,15,42,53,2,44,35,14,49,17,8,41,4,46,1,20,26,47,31,48,27,21,3,33,12,10,5,43,28,18,37,13,40,22,45
However, the keystream generated, when applied to "WBBMCHGFIB" would yield "VIKHBWSFQT".

Good idea though. I'm going to keep trying other tangents with my GA as time permits.

PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:24 pm
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ariock
Has a Posse


Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 762
Location: SF East Bay

 		Genetic Algorithms and Deck Order.
Assuming that the shuffled algorithm is (mostly) sound, shouldn't it have the potential to put out ANY series of letters? And if it can output any series of letters, shouldn't we (theoretically) be able to find a deck order that will spell out pretty much anything we like?
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:08 pm
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