Paul Crowley’s Problems with Bruce Schneier’s “Solitaire” presents evidence of a bias in Bruce Schneier’s Solitaire encryption algorithm. Crowley identifies that successive keystream outputs of Solitaire are the same with probability of approximately 1/22.5, rather than 1/26 as would be the case if the outputs where indistinguishable from random. He ascribes the majority of the bias to the fact that when the top card is the same in successive rounds (which occurs approximately 2% of the time), the output card will be the same with around 34% of the time. Crowley also contends that the cipher is not reversible as claimed by Schneier.
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