True, the contestants are given extra information, though. They know ahead of time that the words make up the name of a place, or a common saying, for example. That helps decrease the entropy considerably. They also know the exact number of characters in the final answer and are able to probe multiple characters in the phrase simultaneously.
If a system is setup correctly, you should never be able to get a hint as to whether you have guessed any portion of a password correctly, and you probably don't know what sort of phrase the target has chosen, so it would seem like most of the entropy-reducing information the Wheel of Fortune contestant is able to take advantage of are not available to a password cracking algorithm. --dan > While 2.5 bits/word seems low, the TV game show Wheel Of Fortune is > evidence that > people can correctly guess phrases even when a large proportion of the > letters > are missing. > > Peter Trei --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]