Talk:Solitaire (cipher)

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is a stub and thus not approved.
 Main Article
 Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
To learn how to update the categories for this article, see here. To update categories, edit the metadata template.
 Definition:  A stream cipher that uses a shuffled deck of cards as its main mechanism. [d] [e]
Checklist and Archives
 Workgroup categories:  Computers and Mathematics [Editors asked to check categories]
 Talk Archive:  none  English language variant:  Canadian English

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. There jokers are used as markers. Some steps move the jokers; others move groups of cards delimited by jokers. Still others take the value of the top card as a number and count down that many cards. Sandy Harris 18:04, 13 May 2011 (CDT)
Retrieved from "https://citizendium.org/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Solitaire_(cipher)&oldid=759639"