X-From-Line: nobody Fri Jul 20 09:26:03 2001 Sender: paul@saltationism.subnet.hedonism.cluefactory.org.uk To: Frans Lategan Subject: Re: Solitaire cipher References: <65CABABC4749D511BFA0009027B11CA6A8EF29@dhexchange.discoveryhealth.co.za> From: Paul Crowley Date: 20 Jul 2001 09:26:03 +0100 In-Reply-To: Frans Lategan's message of "Fri, 20 Jul 2001 07:31:29 +0200" Message-ID: <87u2082ehw.fsf@saltationism.subnet.hedonism.cluefactory.org.uk> User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) XEmacs/21.1 (Capitol Reef) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Lines: 23 Xref: saltationism.subnet.hedonism.cluefactory.org.uk mail.2001-07:135 X-Gnus-Article-Number: 135 Fri Jul 20 09:26:03 2001 Frans Lategan writes: > I just finished Cryptonomicon last night, and as I played around with > Solitaire, I also felt that the outputs were not totally random. Thanks for > an interesting analysis. Another point I have noted, is that if the joker > (53) output is not discarded, each successive round increases the distance > between the jokers by exactly one card. Interesting observation! However, it needs to be modified slightly. The "count cut" can come between the two jokers, meaning that the position of the two jokers is swapped; if it was x before, it will be 54-x afterwards. To get around this, we can define distance to mean the minimum distance going either in the middle of the pack or "around the outside"; in other words, we measure it as min(x, 54-x). This measure of distance is unchanged by the count cut, and will change by 1 (either up or down) with very high probability each round. This is the first time I've heard this fascinating observation. When I get time, I'll add this to my Solitaire page and credit you. Thanks! -- __ Paul Crowley \/ o\ sig@paul.cluefactory.org.uk /\__/ http://www.cluefactory.org.uk/paul/ "Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go around" - John Clark