Talk:Solitaire (cipher)

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Revision as of 18:04, 13 May 2011 by imported>Sandy Harris (→‎Understanding the cipher)
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 Definition:  A stream cipher that uses a shuffled deck of cards as its main mechanism. [d] [e]
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Understanding the cipher

Sandy, this is probably mostly my curiosity; I don't have the book at hand. This sounds like, however, a polyalphabetic substitution with a cryptoperiod of 52. Challenging for manual cryptanalysis, but not for machine analysis.

Do the jokers stay in the deck and complicate the cryptotext with nulls? Is there any kind of cipher feedback? Howard C. Berkowitz 09:08, 13 May 2011 (CDT)

It is a manually operated stream cipher. Generate a series of numbers and mix them with text using addition mod 26. It works a lot like RC4 but with the deck rather than an array of bytes as the state. Period is enormous. The jokers are used as markers. Flip through the deck until you find a joker. Take the value of the card below it and ... Sandy Harris 18:04, 13 May 2011 (CDT)
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