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[Leeravitz]

Sounds logical to me in terms of pure cryptography. Given that this card is silver, the difficulty level should be rather high, and given that Garnet is involved in it, it would be surprising if the answer wasn't super - encrypted in some way, I think.

However, I am left to wonder at what sort of meta - levels the card has to be functioning, if this is the correct reasoning.

The initial story related appears to be (unusually) directly related to the issue of in - game details (maybe this is the special priority of silver cards?). We've speculated that the Djinn virus has some importance within the gameplay, and we are told that Academy files were lifted thanks to it. That's genuinely new information, and it reinforces the idea that (maybe) the Cube thieves engineered Djinn in order to access data on the security systems.

Garnet states he closed down the leak (which is not the same thing as saying that he identified/caught the hackers). Under whose auspices he did this is uncertain - perhaps simply on the Academy's behalf, but we should not rule out the possibility that he was engaged on military business simultaneously.

Anyhow, Garnet is telling us that he was given a further lead, aptly enough, at the Five of Cups (suggestive in itself?) by a mysterious man playing poker. Garnet was given the (by now infamous) 'clue' 'If Entropy Wins, Outward Looks Should Leave you Cold', and the new pack of cards with the marked joker.

What we must assume is that these items, in combination, were enough to help Garnet crack the code.

Where,therefore, does the ciphertext come in? Was Garnet in possession of this originally, or is this, rather, his contribution to the card to help us along? Possibly the ciphertext has other information to give us that is only tangentially related to the major puzzle.

It would seem that we are looking for a specific identity as to the Djinn's developer, so even if the ciphertext *is* directly germane, it must, in turn, conceal another riddle that will lead to an answer and/or tell us the identity of the culprit at some length.

The more I look at the 'Entropy' line, the more it appears to be some kind of cryptic clue. I think Firefox was correct to point out that Entropy, from the standpoint of information theory, relates to how much intelligible information/order is available within a system. Naturally, as cards are shuffled, the amount of order within the system decreases, hence, the entropy of the system increases. A brand new deck will have very low entropy, because all the cards will have been laid out in both suit and numerical order. It is extremely likely that, in a new deck, a 5 of Hearts follows a 4 of Hearts unless there's been some mix - up in the packaging. If you half shuffle a deck, you'll still find that many cards remain in the same coherent order they were originally. Only a truly diligent shuffle will mix them into a state of high entropy.

Thus, 'if entropy wins' i.e. the cards are thrown into disarray, the 'outward looks' (which may well refer to the positioning of the face cards) will 'leave you cold' (i.e. be of no use to you?). Was this a warning to Garnet specifically not to shuffle the deck, but retain it in a low entropy state? Does it suggest something about following the face cards in a coherent numeric/suit based order?

Tough one !

[PuzzledPineapple]

Could this not have something to do with the nine of diamonds found on a card discussed here?

If there are 54 of the cards with these on, then I would guess we have our pack, although we'd have to wait a long time to get them all. If the pack was handed to Garnet in a specific order, then as Leeravitz said, the entropy clue would tell him not to shuffle it. Having said that, it seems far too complicated a clue to just mean "don't shuffle" but not complicated enough to give the order of an entire pack of cards.

[tanner]

i think the cards are designed to be puzzles on their own -- ie no need of perplex city knowledge

and i still like "Heat Death" as part of puzzle

[JebJoya]

[tanner]

tiss a nice idea -- and fits with their concept of collecting small bits of data and putting them together -- like the 333 or the way the maze was meant to be solved

[StarryNight]

If the cards are going on sale this week, we'll probably have all of the cards for this deck in 2 weeks.

However, Garnet said that the cards were "new and untouched" meaning not sorted in any way. The 9 of diamonds idea is brilliant, but I think that it's part of a different puzzle.

[Atrophied]

If the cards are indeed "New and untouched", then they would be in the original order as packaged. This would mean that a solitaire cipher could not provide the answer due to the Jokers not being moved to their correct places to begin encryption.

Unless we have to move the jokers ourselves first and then decipher from that.

I think that we do indeed have to wait until we get the rest of the cards from the deck via the other PXC cards (like the 9 diamonds on the whipsmart card.)

[StarryNight]

My point is this: How did Garnet solve it?

It appears that the Cube Retrieval Team is giving us a deck through the Perplex City Cards. However, this deck sequence was not given to Garnet and therefore he could not have used it to solve the puzzle.

He was given only the information that we were given on the card and he was able to solve it using only that info, plus perhaps some background info.

Interesting that he doesn't say if he knew the man or not...

[JebJoya]

Well, the one thing that he knows that we don't is the order of the playing cards he received.

[arieh]

[jes5199]

at the Five of Cups bar

"Cups" have become "Hearts" in modern cards

[sixsidedsquare]

I don't know if they have to be in the original pack order, cause he said

[JebJoya]

[Jinja87]

Garnet mentions the cards were untouched, so it means they must be still in the order in which they were when they were brand new, ie. in order.

[Seej]