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Generate a Recovery Phrase With Piacentine Cards

This method uses a 40-card Piacentine deck, or another Italian regional deck with the same structure. Each draw maps to a bit sequence in the card table below; accumulate 11 bits for each provisional word, repeat for 12 or 24 words, and then follow the final-word procedure.

Use a table like the following to record the results of card draws in the order drawn.

10245122561286432168421IndexWord

The index is calculated by adding the values in every column containing 1. For example:

10245122561286432168421IndexWord
10110001010

The index is 1024 + 256 + 128 + 8 + 2 = 1418. You do not need to calculate it yourself; use the shared binary words table to find the index and word.

Card-to-Bits Mapping

With a 40-card Italian regional deck, such as Piacentine cards, draw one card at a time until you have enough entropy. Return each card to the deck and shuffle it before the next draw.

Like other regional Italian decks, Piacentine cards have four suits with ten cards each. Cards 1 through 7 show one to seven suit symbols. The remaining cards are:

  • 8: Fante (Jack), a man holding the suit symbol
  • 9: Donna (Queen), a woman holding the suit symbol
  • 10: Re (King), a king holding the suit symbol

These court cards are called Fante, Donna, and Re. Depending on the game, they have values of 8, 9, and 10 respectively. Card 1 of each suit is called Asso (Ace).

For each card, find its value in the following table by matching:

  • the suit (Coppe, Denari, Bastoni, Spade)
  • the rank (A for Ace, 2-7, 8/J for Fante, 9/Q for Donna, 10/K for Re).
SuitRankValue
CoppeA00000
Coppe200001
Coppe300010
Coppe400011
Coppe500100
Coppe600101
Coppe700110
Coppe8/J00111
Coppe9/Q01000
Coppe10/K01001
DenariA01010
Denari201011
Denari301100
Denari401101
Denari501110
Denari601111
Denari710000
Denari8/J10001
Denari9/Q10010
Denari10/K10011
BastoniA10100
Bastoni210101
Bastoni310110
Bastoni410111
Bastoni511000
Bastoni611001
Bastoni711010
Bastoni8/J11011
Bastoni9/Q11100
Bastoni10/K11101
SpadeA11110
Spade211111
Spade3000
Spade4001
Spade5010
Spade6011
Spade7100
Spade8/J101
Spade9/Q110
Spade10/K111