CIA Experts Still Spooked by Kryptos Puzzle

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CIA Experts Still Spooked by Kryptos Puzzle

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:20 pm

<!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://members.aol.com/scirealm/kryptos.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>Morning Edition, June 9, 2005 · For 15 years, a bronze sculpture in the CIA's courtyard has taunted amateur and professional code-breakers alike. Kryptos is a copper wall that features four long coded passages. Cryptographers from the National Security Administration and the CIA have cracked the first three. <br><br>But it's been six years since anyone reported progress, and sculptor Jim Sanborn claims to be the only man alive who knows the solution. Meanwhile, thriller writer Dan Brown is stoking interest: The dust jacket for his The Da Vinci Code featured clues hinting at Kryptos's significance, and Brown has suggested his next novel may somehow feature it.<br><br>Around the world, fans of puzzles and codes are racing to solve Kryptos. A Yahoo discussion group devoted to the puzzle, now boasting 500 members, is growing.<br><br>The Fourth Passage<br>The significance of the initial question-mark character -- as a beginning or a spacer -- is hotly debated by Kryptos sleuths. <br>?OBKRUOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFL<br>RVQQPRNGKSSOTWTQSJQSSEK<br>ZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBNYPVTTM<br>ZFPKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEK<br>CAR<br><br><br>Note:There are no breaks in the sequence.<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4684720" target="top">www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4684720</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>The Mystery of “Kryptos”<br><br>At the entrance to the New Headquarters building, the sculpture begins with two red granite and copperplate constructions which flank the walkway from the parking deck. These stones appear as pages jutting from the earth with copperplate ‘between the pages’ on which there are International Morse code and ancient ciphers. There is also a lodestone (a naturally magnetized rock) co-located with a navigational compass rose.<br><br>In the courtyard, a calm, reflective pool of water lies between two layered slabs of granite and tall grasses. Directly across from this is the centerpiece of “Kryptos,” a piece of petrified wood supporting an S-shaped copper screen surrounding a bubbling pool of water.<br><br>*<br><br>The petrified tree symbolizes the trees that once stood on the site of the sculpture and that were the source of materials on which written language has been recorded.<br>*<br><br>The bubbling pool symbolizes information being disseminated with the destination being unknown. <br>*<br><br>The copperplate screen has approximately 2,000 alphabetic letters cut into it.<br><br>The sculpture is like a history of cryptography. The left side of the copper screen, the first two sections, is a table for deciphering and enciphering code, a method developed by 16th century French cryptographer Blaise de Vigenere. The Vigenere method substitutes letters throughout the message by shifting from one alphabet order to another with each letter of the key. Part of the right side of the sculpture uses the table from the left side, and another portion uses the cryptographic method of transposing letters or changing their position in a message according to whatever method the writer devised. <br><br>The sculpture has been a source of mystery and challenge for Agency employees, other government employees, and interested people outside of government. In early 1998, a CIA physicist announced to the Agency that he had cracked the code for three of the four sections. This was followed a year later by a public announcement from a California computer scientist that he had done the same. As varied as the codes in the sculpture are, so were the methods to crack them. The Agency employee used pencil and paper, and the computer scientist used his computer. No one has yet to break the code for the remaining 97-character message which utilizes a more difficult cryptographic code.<br><br>James Sanborn once said “They will be able to read what I wrote, but what I wrote is a mystery itself.” Only time will tell if the final message to this multi-layered puzzle is ever revealed. If you want to try to break the code, here are the letters from “Kryptos.” <br><br>more...<br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/tour/kryptos_code.html" target="top">www.cia.gov/cia/information/tour/kryptos_code.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://elonka.com/kryptos/faq.html" target="top">elonka.com/kryptos/faq.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=seemslikeadream@rigorousintuition>seemslikeadream</A> at: 6/9/05 12:29 pm<br></i>
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Re: CIA Experts Still Spooked by Kryptos Puzzle

Postby mechabug » Thu Jun 09, 2005 3:08 pm

Here are the translations for the first 3 sections:<br><br>BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION <br><br>IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE ? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS GATHERED AND TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS ? THEY SHOULD ITS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION ? ONLY W_W THIS WAS HIS LAST MESSAGE X THIRTY EIGHT DEGREES FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES SIX POINT FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY SEVEN DEGREES EIGHT MINUTES FORTY FOUR SECONDS WEST ID BY ROW_S<br><br>SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q (?) <br><br><br>The misspellings are not typos. They are part of the sculpture. I find the second passage most fascinating. Some people think that the third paragraph refers to the opening of an Egyptian tomb because there are elements of Egyptology supposedley in the 4th passage. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: CIA Experts Still Spooked by Kryptos Puzzle

Postby anotherdrew » Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:18 am

the third I'd swear is from "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" a fictional account of Harry Houdini in a pyramid by H.P.L. <p></p><i></i>
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tut tut

Postby smiths » Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:24 am

just did quick search with part of passage 3 and found<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa101200c.htm">history1900s.about.com/li...01200c.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>the opening of king tuts tomb <p></p><i></i>
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CIA Experts Still Spooked: The Guardian's comment:

Postby emad » Thu Jun 16, 2005 10:44 am

Interest grows in solving cryptic CIA puzzle after link to Da Vinci Code <br><br>Julian Borger in Washington<br>Saturday June 11, 2005<br>The Guardian <br><br>It is one of the world's most baffling puzzles, the bane of professional cryptologists and amateur sleuths who have spent 15 years trying to solve it.<br>But the race to find the secrets of Kryptos, a sculpture inside a courtyard at the CIA's heavily guarded headquarters in Langley, Virginia, may be reaching a climax.<br><br>And interest has soared since Dan Brown hid references to Kryptos on the cover design for his bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, and suggested it might play a role in his next novel, The Solomon Key.<br><br>The Kryptos sculpture incorporates a coded message made up of thousands of letters punched through a nearly 4 meter (12ft) high copper scroll.<br><br>Though it was installed where only CIA agents and cryptographers could see it, amateur code-breakers have worked away on transcripts posted on the CIA's website.<br><br>Three-quarters of the code has been broken, and the deciphered message so far appears to point to something momentous buried on CIA grounds.<br><br>But the clues are obscure and the fourth passage of the Kryptos code - known as K4 to the addicted - has remained impenetrable.<br><br>However, Elonka Dunin, who runs the most comprehensive website on Kryptos (www.elonka.com/kryptos) said recent activity has surged.<br><br>"My baseline was about 500-600 unique visitors a day. But I recently got 30,000 over a 24-hour period," said Ms Dunin, an executive at a Missouri-based internet game company, Simutronics.<br><br>No one is more amazed at the sudden excitement than Kryptos's creator, Jim Sanborn, who was hired in 1989 by the CIA director at the time, William Webster.<br><br>Mr Sanborn worked with a CIA cryptographer, Ed Scheidt, to produce the coded sculpture, consisting of the S-shaped copper scroll, a petrified tree, a water-filled basin and stones marked with fragments of Morse code and a compass. Placing it in the thick of many of the best code-breakers in the world, they never thought it would take this long.<br><br>"These were events I thought would take months not years," Mr Sanborn, a Washington-based sculptor, told the Guardian.<br><br>The references to Kryptos on the jacket of The Da Vinci Code were only spotted recently. Now Mr Sanborn is worried that the religious and spiritual overtones of Brown's books could settle on his sculpture.<br><br>"Somehow I've been drawn into that vortex," he said.<br><br>With that in mind, Mr Sanborn is taking precautions.<br><br>"I have taken all Kryptos-related material from my house and studio," he said. "The crypto' world has its share of crazies."<br><br>It took eight years for the first three Kryptos passages to be cracked, by a CIA officer named David Stein, after a total of 400 hours with pen and paper.<br><br>He was hit, he later wrote "by that sweetly ecstatic, rare experience that I have heard described as a 'moment of clarity'."<br><br>This being the CIA, the solution was kept a secret, but it was solved separately by Jim Gillogly, a California computer scientist, who published the first three passages in 1999.<br><br>They both used the same method, relying on the fact that the English language uses letters with varying frequencies, allowing code-breakers to calculate which ciphers represent which letters.<br><br>The fourth passage has been masked to make that impossible. So far, Mr Gillogly, one of America's best cryptologists, says he has spent "a couple of hundred hours spread over six years" on the 97 remaining letters, with no success.<br><br>The solution so far includes a couple of misspellings which Mr Sanborn has said are deliberate.<br><br>It gives the coordinates of a spot which seems to be on CIA grounds, and says "only WW" knows the exact location, an apparent reference to William Webster.<br><br>It then quotes the diary entry of the archaeologist Howard Carter on finding Tutankhamen's tomb.<br><br>After completing the sculpture, Mr Sanborn had to hand Mr Webster an envelope containing the solution, but now suggests he gave neither Mr Webster nor Mr Scheidt, the full story. He insists the fourth passage is decipherable and would not be surprised if it were solved soon. "It's being barraged right now," he said.<br><br>Some of the "addicts" are going to remarkable lengths to solve Kryptos.<br><br>Gary Phillips, 27, told the Guardian he had abandoned his software company so that he could devote more time to the code puzzle.<br><br>"I can see how some might perceive that I made a sacrifice by closing my business and pursuing Kryptos," Mr Phillips, a Michigan programmer, said.<br><br>But he added: "Kryptos brought me back to my first love. Like my childhood programming days, I was once again free to pursue a challenge that didn't have the limitations of 'this is how to do it'."<br><br>Mr Sanborn admits he would feel a tinge of regret if Kryptos is solved. He said: "All of us should hope it does survive. There are codes in all our lives that we hope are never deciphered."<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1504317,00.html">books.guardian.co.uk/news...17,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>----------------------------<br><br>"Only WW knows":<br><br>I think it is a beautiful red herring to imply that this refers to William Webster.<br><br>"WW" are the initials of an extraordinary but much maligned lady, now deceased, whose contribution to the downfall of global corruption is a story as yet untold.<br><br>Work out who she was and then look at her birth date and date of death. There's an anniversary of one of these coming up. I think that day may be the one that the CIA gets its act together and busts the entire Bush evil empire.<br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: CIA Experts Still Spooked: The Guardian's comment:

Postby anotherdrew » Fri Jun 17, 2005 1:41 am

Wendy Wright ? <p></p><i></i>
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cryptic

Postby smiths » Fri Jun 17, 2005 3:58 am

i have to say i thought the idea was to inform each other,<br>riddles on pages about riddles, <br>i always was a bit annoyed by 'in jokes' and group words not explained that others didnt know<br><br>so come on, who the fuck is WW <p></p><i></i>
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WW the mystery: this year's Father's Day enigma.

Postby emad » Fri Jun 17, 2005 12:23 pm

My very best bet: Wallis Warfield, born 19 June 1896.<br><br>Bush and Poodle have run a personal vendetta against her family for over 40 years after they were BOTH implicated and sued in the UK over a child gang rape/assasination attempt scandal back in the 1960s that involved members of the P2 Lodge, bent CIA and MI6 spooks and clerics in the Catholic Church who subsequently rose to high public office.<br><br>This reached epic proportions when Vladimir Putin was elected as Russian President in 2000, some ten months before Shrub slimed his way into the White House.<br><br>In January 2003 the Scotsman newspaper ran this story - cited in CounterPunch - which is about as close to the tip of the iceberg as you can get:<br>----------------<br>Blackout in Britain<br>Alleged Pedophiles Helm Blair's War Room<br>by MIKE JAMES <br><br>SEE:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.gaiaguys.net/OperationOre.htm">www.gaiaguys.net/OperationOre.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>----------------<br><br><br>Blair is personally implicated and the target of his 40 year vendetta testified against him in evidence corroborated by independent sources. The whole family image of Poodle, his Missus and kids is a travesty and one which is protected by the same UK bent spooks that colluded to bring the Weapons of Mass Destruction saga and the Yellowcake Uranium nonsense to the gullible voters in the UK.<br><br>I want to say more about this and will post as soon as the new website is up and running: 'Who's Who in World Corruption' - Cold War Edition and Follow-up Edition.<br><br>These are the result of collating UK newspaper cuttings, press reports and copies of UK Legal Papers that have reported on this since 1958 and which deal with all the substantive matters in detail.<br><br>None of it has ever been archived onto the internet. Some WAS available in UK press items held on microfiche in the British Library and other data banks. But mostly these were deliberately excluded from websites launched by the media. Mostly excised in the 1999 'Millenium Bug' excercise that Blair ordered - ostensibly an upgrade of all computerised information that might have been susceptible to setting off a global meltdown when the clocks went past one minute ater midnight on January 1st 2000. But in reality a huge intelligence op to wipe out any reference. <p></p><i></i>
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Addendum to post on WW

Postby emad » Fri Jun 17, 2005 12:28 pm

I posted some background to this on Seemslikeadream's story on 'God's Banker was murdered'. SEE:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://p097.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm7.showMessage?topicID=317.topic">p097.ezboard.com/frigorou...=317.topic</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: CIA Experts Still Spooked by Kryptos Puzzle

Postby PeterofLoneTree » Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:18 pm

If 6EQUJ5 is added to part 4 of the puzzle, does that mean anything to anybody? <p></p><i></i>
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