Decrypting Kryptos

angkor writes "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."

Comments

Is there a solution?

[mistersooreams]

Forgive me for being cynical, but how can we be sure that this final piece is actually crackable? I mean, it would be a cruel joke by Jim Sanborn (the structure's creator) to just include a load of junk, but who's to say he didn't? The fact that the other parts have been deciphered suggests that this last part will give way eventually, but maybe that's just to make the final joke even crueler?

I hope I'm wrong because that would make this story a lot less interesting, but I just thought it should be mentioned.

metaphorically solved section 4

[BierGuzzl]

Weird. This guy apparently metaphorically solved section 4. But he got an email from Jim saying "Dear John, this is not the way" Did he cheat? :)

http://members.aol.com/scirealm/KryptosPart4.htm l

Re:I have always been curious

[0racle]

My girlfriend took one look at it and saw an image embedded in the way the characters are laid out. She figures that a real message would be too obvious and since its art, the real purpose could simply be to see what is not plainly there.

Maybe the boys at Langley are being too literal at trying to solve it.