And now that I think about it, I would guess that Moriarty's main motivation in involving Irene and Sherlock is to "burn the heart" out of him, as he promised. I think Irene thinks it's about the code, though clearly she cares more about the game. But I think Moriarty sees cracking that as kind of a bonus, which explains the gap. I mean, all you'd need to do to get him to crack the code is for Irene to send him a fake phone that he could hack with the code on it and--done. But I think both she and Moriarty were trying to shoot the moon--to not just beat him but make him give up. Which he did, I think, at that moment when Irene walked right past him to talk to Mycroft. As I said above, he only gets his mojo back when he realizes she hadn't done everything he'd given her credit for.
no subject
And now that I think about it, I would guess that Moriarty's main motivation in involving Irene and Sherlock is to "burn the heart" out of him, as he promised. I think Irene thinks it's about the code, though clearly she cares more about the game. But I think Moriarty sees cracking that as kind of a bonus, which explains the gap. I mean, all you'd need to do to get him to crack the code is for Irene to send him a fake phone that he could hack with the code on it and--done. But I think both she and Moriarty were trying to shoot the moon--to not just beat him but make him give up. Which he did, I think, at that moment when Irene walked right past him to talk to Mycroft. As I said above, he only gets his mojo back when he realizes she hadn't done everything he'd given her credit for.