Seed phrase recovery?

[fanya]

Years ago I had a lot of Bitcoin that I doomed and I've lost bitcoin in various ways. In the beginning, Bitcoin was more like a game to me, like modern CS:GO skins that you can collect and trade.

Now I have found a self-made puzzle of one of my seeds. I have about 30-50 seedphrase words here, I have written them down in a pattern that I can't remember. Only with the right pattern can I put the words in the right order.

So I definitely have the valid words, I just can't remember which ones they were.

Is there any chance of finding the words and putting them in the right order? The valid words should definitely be included.

There should be 12 valid ones.

I'll have to solve it myself, because I'm not going to let it out of my hands.

(I posted this topic in the wrong section before, I need to get it moved somehow)

[apogio]

So you have 50 words scattered on a piece of paper and you want to find the correct 12 ones in the correct order.

This gives you 50!/(50-12)! = 58,150,627,116,341,760,000 total permutations.

You need 1 out of them.

[BitHodlers]

Now I have found a self-made puzzle of one of my seeds. I have about 30-50 seedphrase words here, I have written them down in a pattern that I can't remember. Only with the right pattern can I put the words in the right order.

This seems to be strange to me, how can you have such a big range? You should know how many words you have.

So you have 50 words scattered on a piece of paper and you want to find the correct 12 ones in the correct order.

This gives you 50!/(50-12)! = 58,150,627,116,341,760,000 total permutations.

You need 1 out of them.

With 30, that gives him 30!/(30-12)! =41,430,393,164,160,000 total permutations. If I followed your example correctly. Big difference depending on the exact number of words in his case, but still quite unlikely that it will be found this way.

[apogio]

With 30, that gives him 30!/(30-12)! =41,430,393,164,160,000 total permutations. If I followed your example correctly. Big difference depending on the exact number of words in his case, but still quite unlikely that it will be found this way.

The difference is big because it's like 60% of the original dataset.

I don't really know if it's unlikely, because doing time-related calculations is not my specialty. But, in my opinion it's worth knowing how many total arrangements of the words exist. Obviously the great majority of them isn't a valid seed phrase.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

It gone because if mixing wallet mnemonic seed and many random words which are not wallet mnemonic seed words.

OP has no chance to find 12 accurate words of his wallet but to avoid similar mistake in wallet backup, he will need to read.
How to back up a seed phrase?

One point can be taken from it.

Loss due to complexity / not being able to restore from backup

Complex your wallet back up will not make your back up safer but more risk of failure in recovery later.

Don't split your wallet seed too.
Why seed splitting is a bad idea?

[BitHodlers]

With 30, that gives him 30!/(30-12)! =41,430,393,164,160,000 total permutations. If I followed your example correctly. Big difference depending on the exact number of words in his case, but still quite unlikely that it will be found this way.

The difference is big because it's like 60% of the original dataset.

I don't really know if it's unlikely, because doing time-related calculations is not my specialty. But, in my opinion it's worth knowing how many total arrangements of the words exist. Obviously the great majority of them isn't a valid seed phrase.

Now I'd be more interested to know if there is an open source tool for brute forcing the permutations? Something similar to the vanity address generator of the old days.

[LoyceV]

I have about 30-50 seedphrase words here

What an odd way to describe how many words you have. Either way, this is futile, you have a better chance of brute-forcing your Electrum wallet from your other post.

[Cricktor]

It gone because if mixing wallet mnemonic seed and many random words which are not wallet mnemonic seed words.

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but nope, OP said that it's all words from mnemonic wordlist. He basically failed to document his own obfuscation or correct pattern how to find his mnemonic wallet recovery words in his grid of words.

Maybe his recovery words are at prime number positions in his extended list of words or something similar, like jumping like a chess bishop on a grid of words. Possibilities are vast and I always wonder why people invent something but fail to document it. Because one thing is for sure: you will forget whatever you invented when you don't use or repeat it regularly.

Loss due to complexity / not being able to restore from backup

Complex your wallet back up will not make your back up safer but more risk of failure in recovery later.

Not much to add to this. Add complexity and/or obscurity and fail to document it for you or your heirs and you have a recipe for desaster and loss.

Whatever you do, you should verify if you can successfully recover your wallet(s). If you have your non-standard procedure(s) only in your head, it's almost guaranteed you will forget something and shoot yourself in your foot. Don't do this, apply KISS principles!

I have about 30-50 seedphrase words here

What an odd way to describe how many words you have.

Indeed, I would think it should be possible to count the words and tell the exact number. Not that it would make much of a difference. Without any clues, you can't really brute-force this. You don't have the time and/or the energy to exhaust the search space.

[DannyHamilton]

I have a few questions.

• How many words do you have written on the paper. Please count them. Is it 30? Is it 50? Is it some other number?
• Is there any pattern to how they are written? Alphabetical? Length (number of letters)? Vertical list? Horizontal, comma separated? Around the circumfrence of a circle? Something else?
• How many bitcoins will you gain access to once you solve this puzzle?
• Do you have/know any of the Bitcoin addresses associated with the puzzle?
• How much did you pay to purchase this puzzle? Where did you buy it? How did the seller contact you

[pooya87]

I have about 30-50 seedphrase words here, I have written them down in a pattern that I can't remember. Only with the right pattern can I put the words in the right order.

There should be 12 valid ones.

Recovery through brute force is only possible if the search space is small enough that can be checked within reasonable time.

So the first step is to shrink that search space as much as possible. So for example you have to first figure out how many words you actually have. Why is it a big range (30 to 50) instead of a fixed value?! Just count them already...

Then start checking them against a word list trying to eliminate invalid ones to reduce that search space.
But to do that, you first need to figure out how you created the mnemonic in first place. Although there is a popular and most used word-list standardized by BIP-39[1] but other wallets like Electrum, blockchain.info, etc. have used different word lists and algorithms in the past.

Knowing the wallet/tool used is also necessary to know the mnemonic algorithm when recovering your keys. After all you have to derive the child key to check if it is valid.
It would also help if you knew the version of that wallet/tool that you used. For example Electrum has changed its algorithm 2 times if I'm not mistaken. Knowing the year or version of it would help narrow down the algorithm.

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-0039-wordlists.md

P.S. of course if you have "bought" this from some random user on the internet telling you it holds a treasure, you most probably threw your money away and are also wasting other people's time who would try to help you.

[ABCbits]

So I definitely have the valid words, I just can't remember which ones they were.

If it's BIP39 seed phrase, have you checked those 30-50 words with BIP39 english word list on https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt?

With 30, that gives him 30!/(30-12)! =41,430,393,164,160,000 total permutations. If I followed your example correctly. Big difference depending on the exact number of words in his case, but still quite unlikely that it will be found this way.

The difference is big because it's like 60% of the original dataset.

I don't really know if it's unlikely, because doing time-related calculations is not my specialty. But, in my opinion it's worth knowing how many total arrangements of the words exist. Obviously the great majority of them isn't a valid seed phrase.

Now I'd be more interested to know if there is an open source tool for brute forcing the permutations? Something similar to the vanity address generator of the old days.

There are plenty of such tool, such as BTCRecover by 3rdIteration and FinderOuter by Coding Enthusiast. But none of them would help OP, due to high amount of permutation and limitation of today's hardware (even if we talk about multi GPU).

[fanya]

I have about 30-50 seedphrase words here

What an odd way to describe how many words you have. Either way, this is futile, you have a better chance of brute-forcing your Electrum wallet from your other post.

I counted, there are 50 words. I don't even remember if this is the seed that leads to my lost Electrum wallet from my thread from here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5523791.0), but I wrote down all my wallet addresses from back then. Any amount on these addresses is enough.

It gone because if mixing wallet mnemonic seed and many random words which are not wallet mnemonic seed words.

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but nope, OP said that it's all words from mnemonic wordlist. He basically failed to document his own obfuscation or correct pattern how to find his mnemonic wallet recovery words in his grid of words.

Maybe his recovery words are at prime number positions in his extended list of words or something similar, like jumping like a chess bishop on a grid of words. Possibilities are vast and I always wonder why people invent something but fail to document it. Because one thing is for sure: you will forget whatever you invented when you don't use or repeat it regularly.

Loss due to complexity / not being able to restore from backup

Complex your wallet back up will not make your back up safer but more risk of failure in recovery later.

Not much to add to this. Add complexity and/or obscurity and fail to document it for you or your heirs and you have a recipe for desaster and loss.

Whatever you do, you should verify if you can successfully recover your wallet(s). If you have your non-standard procedure(s) only in your head, it's almost guaranteed you will forget something and shoot yourself in your foot. Don't do this, apply KISS principles!

I have about 30-50 seedphrase words here

What an odd way to describe how many words you have.

Indeed, I would think it should be possible to count the words and tell the exact number. Not that it would make much of a difference. Without any clues, you can't really brute-force this. You don't have the time and/or the energy to exhaust the search space.

I also had another method of storing Bitcoin back then, as you can read here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5523791.0). I don't quite know if the seed I found leads to this wallet or another one, but I know all my addresses and any of them is a win.

I don't really remember what I was thinking exactly to invent this kind of puzzle but at that point I found it quite fascinating that there are so many individual ways to store Bitcoin, a bit adventurous.

I have a few questions.

• How many words do you have written on the paper. Please count them. Is it 30? Is it 50? Is it some other number?
• Is there any pattern to how they are written? Alphabetical? Length (number of letters)? Vertical list? Horizontal, comma separated? Around the circumfrence of a circle? Something else?
• How many bitcoins will you gain access to once you solve this puzzle?
• Do you have/know any of the Bitcoin addresses associated with the puzzle?
• How much did you pay to purchase this puzzle? Where did you buy it? How did the seller contact you

• I have 50 words.
  
• These words are not written in any particular pattern, but I have highlighted some of them with a pencil. But the marked words are more than 24, so it doesn't make sense and I can't imagine that I thought it made sense at the time, it wouldn't be a puzzle. If I remember correctly, the seed only consists of 12 words.
• I have several addresses and I don't know which address this puzzle leads to but I have an overview of all my addresses from that time. Each address holds enough Bitcoin to make you tear your hair out.  
• I didn't buy this puzzle, I made it myself on a piece of quality paper using my own pattern and wrote a card to solve it, somehow like this.
  Now I only have the part that contains the words, without knowing the pattern to read the valid words.

I have about 30-50 seedphrase words here, I have written them down in a pattern that I can't remember. Only with the right pattern can I put the words in the right order.

There should be 12 valid ones.

Recovery through brute force is only possible if the search space is small enough that can be checked within reasonable time.

So the first step is to shrink that search space as much as possible. So for example you have to first figure out how many words you actually have. Why is it a big range (30 to 50) instead of a fixed value?! Just count them already...

Then start checking them against a word list trying to eliminate invalid ones to reduce that search space.
But to do that, you first need to figure out how you created the mnemonic in first place. Although there is a popular and most used word-list standardized by BIP-39[1] but other wallets like Electrum, blockchain.info, etc. have used different word lists and algorithms in the past.

Knowing the wallet/tool used is also necessary to know the mnemonic algorithm when recovering your keys. After all you have to derive the child key to check if it is valid.
It would also help if you knew the version of that wallet/tool that you used. For example Electrum has changed its algorithm 2 times if I'm not mistaken. Knowing the year or version of it would help narrow down the algorithm.

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-0039-wordlists.md

P.S. of course if you have "bought" this from some random user on the internet telling you it holds a treasure, you most probably threw your money away and are also wasting other people's time who would try to help you.

There are 50 words. At that time I was using an Electrum version that is years old now. Maybe around 2012? Definitely nothing newer, as I had cut bitcoin out of my life for a few years until I came across it again not so long ago. Between 2014 and 2015 I was busy with altcoins. From 2015 onwards, I completely took care of my life, my job and forgot about that kind of stuff because I only found out about it through friends anyway and only half understood it for myself, my view of Bitcoin wasn't that strong for a long time and I didn't fully understand it yet. It was all pretty messy.

[LoyceV]

I don't even remember if this is the seed that leads to my lost Electrum wallet from my thread

So you're saying you made all the mistakes in the book. That's just negligence. Why would you write down addresses instead of your seed? Writing addresses is pointless and prone to mistakes anyway.

How did you get those 50 words? You'll have to put effort into finding the words, or did you make them up yourself?

I have 50 words.
These words are not written in any particular pattern, but I have highlighted some of them with a pencil. But the marked words are more than 24, so it doesn't make sense and I can't imagine that I thought it made sense at the time, it wouldn't be a puzzle.

Serious question: what do you expect from us?

[ABCbits]

There are 50 words. At that time I was using an Electrum version that is years old now. Maybe around 2012? Definitely nothing newer, as I had cut bitcoin out of my life for a few years until I came across it again not so long ago. Between 2014 and 2015 I was busy with altcoins. From 2015 onwards, I completely took care of my life, my job and forgot about that kind of stuff because I only found out about it through friends anyway and only half understood it for myself, my view of Bitcoin wasn't that strong for a long time and I didn't fully understand it yet. It was all pretty messy.

In that case, it's possible your seed phrase was generated using old version of Electrum's seed phrase which use 1626 english words rather than 2048 english words. You can visit https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/5883aaf8ca2f79bf694d11ac6b63f5defd2a2c38/client/mnemonic.py#L23-L1650 and check whether all of your 50 words exist on that list, in order to narrow down.

[nc50lc]

There are 50 words. At that time I was using an Electrum version that is years old now. Maybe around 2012? Definitely nothing newer, -snip-

Theoretically, you can create an non-standard old Electrum seed phrase with higher number words by using very old Electrum's "mnemonic.py" script with a very long seed (Hex, 3 words per 32-bit)

E.g. in v0.30's mnemonic.py:

But you can't use that in old nor new Electrum clients, it's not the accepted "old_seed" format.

I doubt that it's an old Electrum seed if it isn't 12 words.

[mcdouglasx]

@fanya According to your latest threads, it seems like you once had a phase where you loved steganography. Even though you said you weren’t too interested in the topic and saw it as more of a “game”, it looks like you focused a lot on protecting it.

In one thread, you split the information into two zip files, and in another, you "encrypted" it using a method you invented yourself.

It’s hard to give a definitive answer to all of this, but my best advice for you is not to do this again, you’re more likely to lose everything with these self-invented techniques than with standardized security methods.

[fanya]

There are 50 words. At that time I was using an Electrum version that is years old now. Maybe around 2012? Definitely nothing newer, -snip-

Theoretically, you can create an non-standard old Electrum seed phrase with higher number words by using very old Electrum's "mnemonic.py" script with a very long seed (Hex, 3 words per 32-bit)

E.g. in v0.30's mnemonic.py:
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/05/06/UUSHad.png
But you can't use that in old nor new Electrum clients, it's not the accepted "old_seed" format.

I doubt that it's an old Electrum seed if it isn't 12 words.

There should be 12 words but I mixed these words manually and wrote them down with many other words in a certain pattern because I was excited about the uniqueness of storing Bitcoin as individually as possible.

Unfortunately, I no longer have a solution to my pattern, but the required words are here.

[LoyceV]

There should be 12 words but I mixed these words manually and wrote them down with many other words

That's why I asked how you came up with the words. If they're not on a default word list, you may be able to strike out enough of them.

[nc50lc]

-snip-

There should be 12 words but I mixed these words manually and wrote them down with many other words in a certain pattern because I was excited about the uniqueness of storing Bitcoin as individually as possible.

Following Loyce's suggestion, try to look for words in this list that (don't) belong to your 50-word list.

old_mnemonic: github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/old_mnemonic.py
That's the same old wordlist used by Electrum when you allegedly created your wallet.

[Cricktor]

That's why I asked how you came up with the words. If they're not on a default word list, you may be able to strike out enough of them.

I assume the padding of OP's 12 mnemonic recovery words with additional 38 words to get some grid of 50 words was meant as some sort of disguise or hiding in plain sight or puzzle (for whom?). Using 38 words that don't belong to the mnemonic wordlist doesn't make sense, as it would be trivial to separate the recovery words from the padding words.

I repeat myself: don't do such things without proper documentation. It's a trap or recipe for future desaster as we see it here in this topic.

Now I have found a self-made puzzle of one of my seeds. I have about 30-50 seedphrase words here, I have written them down in a pattern that I can't remember. Only with the right pattern can I put the words in the right order.

Now that we know the number is 50, OP states clearly for me, they are seedphrase words, i.e. are words from mnemonic wordlist. Or is my interpretation wrong?