Is Kryptos (the CIA statue) Almost Solved?

This is a pretty amazing story if you have ever followed it. The Kryptos statue was created by Jim Sanborn. He was hired in 1989 by then CIA Director William Webster.

Sanborn worked with a CIA cryptographer named Ed Scheidt, to produce the coded sculpture which consists of an "S" shaped copper scroll, a petrified tree, a water-filled basin, stones marked with fragments of Morse code and a compass. Apperently when solved it will give the coordinates of a spot on the CIA grounds that only William Webster knows about.

It's just amazing that the best minds at the CIA haven't cracked it. One CIA guy has solved 3 parts (and so has a California based computer scientist) but the 4th has never been solved.

Can you IMAGINE if someone from ATS cracked the final section?

Kryptos is a sculpture located on the grounds of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Installed in 1990, its thousands of characters contain encrypted messages, of which three have been solved (so far). There is still a fourth section at the bottom consisting of 97 or 98 characters which remains uncracked.

elonka.com...

Nobody thought it would take years to solve this in the middle of the CIA headquarters. Anyway, the most excellent site above has TONS of links about this amazing sculpture. It seems new interest has been drawn since Dan Brown included Kryptos on the cover of his latest book.

The very real "National Treasure" style race seems to be on once again.

Other Related Info Sites:
www.cia.gov...
realmoftwelve.fateback.com...

I was just thinking about that the other day. I meant to look it up to see if anyone has solved the last part yet. I guess not.

I hope it's solved soon

www.cnn.com...

Originally posted by ZeddicusZulZorander
Can you IMAGINE if someone from ATS cracked the final section?

Hey, were working on it, those of us who "followed it".


It isn't exactly easy, with the new travel schedule WOS demands, no time in VA, and with the new move and all.

Not to mention the new Gitmo requirements for "interrogationally correct" or IC... oh well, the .50 cent salary raise over the next ten years was worth it.

I guess.

Is anyone here willing to give it a shot? I got this from the CIA.gov website. It's both sides of the sculpture, as it's been disciphered so far:


The Kryptos Code
Left Side


E M U F P H Z L R F A X Y U S D J K Z L D K R N S H G N F I V J
Y Q T Q U X Q B Q V Y U V L L T R E V J Y Q T M K Y R D M F D
V F P J U D E E H Z W E T Z Y V G W H K K Q E T G F Q J N C E
G G W H K K ? D Q M C P F Q Z D Q M M I A G P F X H Q R L G
T I M V M Z J A N Q L V K Q E D A G D V F R P J U N G E U N A
Q Z G Z L E C G Y U X U E E N J T B J L B Q C R T B J D F H R R
Y I Z E T K Z E M V D U F K S J H K F W H K U W Q L S Z F T I
H H D D D U V H ? D W K B F U F P W N T D F I Y C U Q Z E R E
E V L D K F E Z M O Q Q J L T T U G S Y Q P F E U N L A V I D X
F L G G T E Z ? F K Z B S F D Q V G O G I P U F X H H D R K F
F H Q N T G P U A E C N U V P D J M Q C L Q U M U N E D F Q
E L Z Z V R R G K F F V O E E X B D M V P N F Q X E Z L G R E
D N Q F M P N Z G L F L P M R J Q Y A L M G N U V P D X V K P
D Q U M E B E D M H D A F M J G Z N U P L G E W J L L A E T G
E N D Y A H R O H N L S R H E O C P T E O I B I D Y S H N A I A
C H T N R E Y U L D S L L S L L N O H S N O S M R W X M N E
T P R N G A T I H N R A R P E S L N N E L E B L P I I A C A E
W M T W N D I T E E N R A H C T E N E U D R E T N H A E O E
T F O L S E D T I W E N H A E I O Y T E Y Q H E E N C T A Y C R
E I F T B R S P A M H N E W E N A T A M A T E G Y E E R L B
T E E F O A S F I O T U E T U A E O T O A R M A E E R T N R T I
B S E D D N I A A H T T M S T E W P I E R O A G R I E W F E B
A E C T D D H I L C E I H S I T E G O E A O S D D R Y D L O R I T
R K L M L E H A G T D H A R D P N E O H M G F M F E U H E
E C D M R I P F E I M E H N L S S T T R T V D O H W ? O B K R
U O X O G H U L B S O L I F B B W F L R V Q Q P R N G K S S O
T W T Q S J Q S S E K Z Z W A T J K L U D I A W I N F B N Y P
V T T M Z F P K W G D K Z X T J C D I G K U H U A U E K C A R

Right Side

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C D
A K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P
B R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T
C Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O
D P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S
E T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A
F O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B
G S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C
H A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D
I B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E
J C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F
K D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G
L E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H
M F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I
N G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J
O H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L
P I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M
Q J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N
R L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q
S M N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U
T N Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V
U Q U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W
V U V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X
W V W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z
X W X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K
Y X Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R
Z Z K R Y P T O S A B C D E F G H I J L M N Q U V W X Z K R Y

Be forewarned though, that this line-by-line text is correct. HOWEVER, I can't seem to right margin flush the second side of the code, as it is at the original website. What the heck, give it a shot anyway.



[edit on 20-6-2005 by Toelint]

Here is the lin for your white box with the red X in it.

www.cia.gov...

I would fix it, but this isn't one my forums.

LOL Thank's ADVISOR! I just did it the hard way...saved it in MS Word, then cut and pasted it here. Hey, what ever works, right?

The following was Cut and Pasted from AskOxford.com. I did some additional work to make it more readable.

The inventor of Morse code, Samuel Morse (1791-1872), needed to know this so that he could give the simplest codes to the most frequently used letters. He did it simply by counting the number of letters in sets of printers' type. The figures he came up with were:
12,000 E
9,000 T
8,000 A, I, N, O, S
6,400 H
6,200 R
4,400 D
4,000 L
3,400 U
3,000 C, M
2,500 F
2,000 W, Y
1,700 G, P
1,600 B
1,200 V
800 K
500 Q
400 J, X
200 Z


However, this gives the frequency of letters in English text, which is dominated by a relatively small number of common words (see What are the commonest English words?). For word games, it is often the frequency of letters in English vocabulary, regardless of word frequency, which is of more interest. We did an analysis of the letters occurring in the words listed in the main entries of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (9th edition, 1995) and came up with the following table:


E 11.1607 %56.88
A 8.4966 %43.31
R 7.5809 %38.64
I 7.5448 %38.45
O 7.1635 %36.51
T 6.9509 %35.43
N 6.6544 %33.92
S 5.7351 %29.23
L 5.4893 %27.98
C 4.5388 %23.13
U 3.6308 %18.51
D 3.3844 %17.25
P 3.1671 %16.14
H 3.0034 %15.31
M 3.0129 %15.36
G 2.4705 %12.59
B 2.0720 %10.56
F 1.8121 %9.24
Y 1.7779 %9.06
W 1.2899 %6.57
K 1.1016 %5.61
V 1.0074 %5.13
X 0.2902 %1.48
Z 0.2722 %1.39
J 0.1965 %1.00
Q 0.1962 %(1)


The third column represents proportions, taking the least common letter (q) as equal to 1. The letter E is over 56 times more common than Q in forming individual English words.

The frequency of letters at the beginnings of words is different again. There are more English words beginning with the letter 's' than with any other letter. (This is mainly because clusters such as 'sc', 'sh', 'sp', and 'st' act almost like independent letters.) The letter 'e' only comes about halfway down the order, and the letter 'x' unsurprisingly comes last.

I hope this helps out.



[edit on 28-6-2005 by Toelint]

Appearently, the first part of the code has been decoded. (As I thought, the code breaks at every question mark.)

Here's a link to it as it's been decoded.

elonka.com...

Also, it's rumored that David Stein, a Senior Analyist with the CIA has cracked the entire code, with the except of the last 97 characters. (The Fourth part.)I've seen no proof of that though.

Ah, so now we know how Al-Quaeda was able to successfully penetrate the protective shield around the most powerful nation on Earth - All the CIA guys are sat around trying to solve a puzzle.

Well the S-shaped curve of the scroll is also a SIN/COS wave pattern when viewed from above. And for some of the encryptions, it might be useful to utilize SIN/COS wave formulas, such as maybe intersecting a line from end to the other and recording the letters where the line crosses. Not exactly doable considering the location of the sculpture, but you get the idea.
Its all about transposition anyway.

After seeing the second half of repeating text, its apparent there is some kind of loop to the string of letters much like a circle.

Elonka advises, on her website, not to use the official CIA site's proposed code, as apparently there is more than one error in it - but use her links instead (check Elonka's site for more regarding this).

During an interview with Sanborn, he states that the most obvious 'hints' regarding cracking the Kryptos code have been overlooked.

He also states that even if the last part of the code (less than 100 characters) gets decoded, still the message will remain a mystery, and underlines that the real challenge will be to understand what the whole message means in its entirety. Considering that there are many elements regarding nature and natural forces, phylosophy and discernment to contemplate, it shall not be an easy task at all.

He also states that something is actually buried on the CIA grounds, but unfortunately it is highly unlikely anyone will ever be able to access the area at all, let alone start digging around...

There is much more to this - let me find the link to the multiple interviews available on the Net, so that you also may read and perhaps perceive more from Sanborn's machiavellian statements.

Oh - he also states that he cannot remember the final solution...

Will find relative link to support all the above, and will post again asap.

This link shows an aerial view of the CIA premises and the Kryptos sculpture location - plus other elements (thank you Elonka!)

elonka.com...

This is the site in which many interviews related to Kryptos have been collected:

members.aol.com...

that is an interesting version, though apparently there are others.

Originally posted by Toelint

Here's a link to it as it's been decoded.

elonka.com...

here is what the three decoded parts are, according to the high IQ society.

KRYPTOS

Solution: Three parts of Kryptos have been decrypted so far. Note: The word "iqlusion" in part one is not a transcription mistake. This is how it is actually encoded in Kryptos.

* Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion.

* It was totally invisible.
How's that possible? They used the earth's magnetic field. x The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund to an unknown location. x Does Langley know about this? They should: it's buried out there somewhere. x Who knows the exact location? Only WW. 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 rows.

* 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?


www.highiqsociety.org...

[edit on 22-7-2005 by deaf fences hit]

[edit on 22-7-2005 by deaf fences hit]

[edit on 22-7-2005 by deaf fences hit]

According to Sanborn, the first section refers to clues regarding how one should approach the whole procedure.

The second section mentions his burying of 'something' on the CIA grounds.

The third section describes the moment in which King Tut's tomb was discovered - this to underline the feeling of excitement and sheer joy one lives when discovering something mysterious - what he wished would happen once Kryptos is cracked.

The first three parts are in English language - the fourth has been considerably masked and it does not have the english language advantage.

The first two sections are there to instruct how to decode the third and fourth section.

He also states that those who have decoded the third section have actually got it right, but did not use to the full the 'instructions' included in the first two sections.

Again, he states that the major clue to Kryptos' decoding has so far been overlooked - I personally believe artists will see this clue before mathematicians ever will

Sanborn's choice of materials for Kryptos' construction must not be overlooked in the least

Maybe it's not describing King Tut's Tomb. Maybe it's regarding the "lower" chamber of the The Temple of Herod/Solomons Temple?

Dunno- might have to do with "whatever" the Knights Templer "legends" claim they found...

Peace

Originally posted by Toelint
...Concise Oxford Dictionary (9th edition, 1995) and came up with the following table:

E 11.1607 %56.88
A 8.4966 %43.31
R 7.5809 %38.64
I 7.5448 %38.45
O 7.1635 %36.51
T 6.9509 %35.43
N 6.6544 %33.92
S 5.7351 %29.23
L 5.4893 %27.98
C 4.5388 %23.13
U 3.6308 %18.51
D 3.3844 %17.25
P 3.1671 %16.14
H 3.0034 %15.31
M 3.0129 %15.36
G 2.4705 %12.59
B 2.0720 %10.56
F 1.8121 %9.24
Y 1.7779 %9.06
W 1.2899 %6.57
K 1.1016 %5.61
V 1.0074 %5.13
X 0.2902 %1.48
Z 0.2722 %1.39
J 0.1965 %1.00
Q 0.1962 %(1)

[edit on 28-6-2005 by Toelint]

That's pretty interesting. It reminds me of something very similar but within mathimatics and number probability distribution. It's known as Benford's Law.
Benford’s “Law of Anomalous Numbers” states that the distribution of first digits of numbers generated by no known systematic process follows a logarithmic pattern:
1st Digit - Probability
1 - 30.10%
2 - 17.61%
3 - 12.49%
4 - 9.69%
5 - 7.92%
6 - 6.69%
7 - 5.80%
8 - 5.12%
9 - 4.58%
0 - 0.0%

It's used in accounting mostly to help find cases of fraud. For example if someone is skimming off the top or something and having to make up numbers to try and hide it. Intuitively people use a method of choosing numbers randomly and purposefully without patterns so that it doesn't look "fixed". However, it is that random use of numbers that actually gives them away, which they could have avoided if they knew Bedford's Law.

EDIT: Made Quote Smaller and moved stuff a bit.

[edit on 22-7-2005 by mOjOm]

I found this today and thought I would update this thread.

Typo Confounds Kryptos Sleuths
For more than a decade, amateur and professional cryptographers have been trying to decipher an encrypted sculpture that sits on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Three-fourths of the sculpture has already been solved.

But now Jim Sanborn, the artist who created the Kryptos sculpture, says he made a mistake. A previously solved part of the puzzle that sleuths assumed was correct for years isn't. The new information, including what the mistaken text really says, is creating a buzz among enthusiasts who've been obsessed over the sculpture for years.

It all comes down to a letter that Sanborn left out of the sculpture. He only recently realized the omission was leading sleuths down a misguided path. His followers, however, aren't feeling any grief about the misdirection.

Pretty interesting that 3/4's of the puzzle is solved and maybe this typo was what was causing a problem with the final solution. It should now only be a matter of time.

There was an error in the creation of the statue itself! If he just noticed it now, I can only assume that its pershaps a 'non-coding' part, or a part that is intended as something of a distraction?