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Sculptor Gives a Hint For CIA's Kryptos
omega_cubed writes "The New York Times reports that Jim Sanborn, the sculptor who created the wavy metal pane called Kryptos that sits in front of the CIA in Langley, VA, has gotten tired of waiting for code-breakers to decode the last of the four messages. 'I assumed the code would be cracked in a fairly short time,' [Sanborn] said, adding that the intrusions on his life from people who think they have solved his fourth puzzle are more than he expected. So now, after 20 years, Mr. Sanborn is nudging the process along. He has provided The New York Times with the answers to six letters in the sculpture's final passage. The characters that are the 64th through 69th in the final series on the sculpture read NYPVTT. When deciphered, they read BERLIN."
Not to say that the geeks don't geek, but c'mon... what intrusions? My guess: he just wanted someone to care again.
Good karma is like social intolerance; apparently everyone has it but me.
I'm not familiar with Kryptos, and I'm not one for cryptography. We know there are (at least) two layers here, the encryption and the resulting riddle. Obviously Sanborn is being coy.
The word IQLUSION stood out to me. At face value this seems to be a misspelling of illusion, but also obvious is the beginning IQ: intelligence quotient. If that is abbreviated to intelligence, and you read through the rest, you get intelligence illusion. Perhaps a reference to counter-intelligence? This is Langley, after all.
Maybe this is old news, or nothing, or part of the second layer riddle. Just something I thought of after a few minutes. I didn't have any insight about UNDERGRUUND, though.
If you walk up to someone and start the conversation in German, it can continue in German. If you need to conduct business and aren't comfortable concluding it in a language you struggle with, you can always switch to English and be successful.
I was able to use quite a bit more German than I thought I would when I visited Austria and Germany for a few weeks in 2008; it had been almost a decade since I had studied German in college.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Poor sculptor actually, since Sanborn chopped off a letter in one of the codes to make it more aesthetically pleasing but as a result led everyone to an incorrect answer for one of the puzzles
The guy is a cryptographer... I'd consider "Berlin" as being both a clue *and* a misdirection.
The message might well read something like : rememBER LINcoln's birthplace...
Exactly. I am German and there is a game we play with little kids called "Teekesselchen". This is a game where the goal is to find the meaning or a word which is pronounced the same but means different things. The opponent needs to figure out the word by me describing the item without using the actual word.
One Example is Boxer which can be a human fighter or a dog.
Same goes for Berliner, most Germans with a basic understanding of German/English know that JFK was not talking about a jelly doughnut.
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dead puppies and rainbow-colored gut piles, yes