CIA Experts Still Spooked by Kryptos Puzzle
Posted: 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>