I’ve been looking for a likely candidate to try out decrypting my potentially un-superenciphered Kryptos K4 strings.
Is it foursquare?
I don’t really know, it makes more sense than bifid (can’t use transposition) and more likely than playfair (insertion of null characters with doubles) plus it gives the chance to have 2 keywords and it’s a matrix based substitution cipher.
I’ll give it a shot with the plaintext break BERLIN.
Here’s a look at Kryptos K4 with the BERLIN break with the additive string, notice the double F’s which is not possible in the same decryption grid for foursquare.
There are of course other ways of doing this.
This one didn’t fair much better. It would have been nice if the F’s had mapped to the same location.
At least there’s still the subtraction.
At least these aren’t impossible.
What’s it look like the other way?
Harder than one would expect if this was how Kryptos was enciphered…
I’m not saying I didn’t find any but only could if you ignore the general rules for using a keyed alphabet, i.e. not repeating letters:
If you remember, my two possible orientations were the Foursquare after subtraction (L to R) and Foursquare after subtraction (R to L).
The Left to Right needs a 12+ letter word with Q (2nd) and Z (12th) in the bottom quadrant and a 16+ letter word with Z (16th) and V (5th) in the top right quadrant.
Non-specializing (too bad it’s a hypenated word) for a 12th Z
Colloquialize has the z in the right spot but q is wrong
Colloquializer is the same
Retranquilize
Sequentialize
Sequentialized
Sequentializes
Sequentializing
Untranquilize
Untranquilized
Untranquilizing
Untranquillize
Untranquillized
Ventriloquize
Ventriloquized
Ventriloquizes
Ventriloquizing
Aquotization has a 2nd Q but the Z is 7th
Aquotize is the same
Equalization
Equalizations
Equalize
Equalized
Equalizer
Equalizers
Equalizes
Equalizing
Equestrianize works, wait, WTF! How did I miss that one!
Equilibrize
Equisized
Squamosozygomatic
Squamozygomatic
Squeezabilities
Squeezability
Squeezable
Squeezableness
Squeezably
Squeeze
Squeezebox
Squeezeboxes
Squeezed
Squeezeman
Squeezer
Squeezers
Squeezes
Squeezier
Squeeziest
Squeezing
Squeezingly
Squeezings
Squeezy
Squiz
Squizzes
Squoze
The Right to Left needs a 16+ letter word with Q (5th) and Z (16th) in the bottom and a 12+ letter word with Z (12th) and V (2nd) in the top.
Tranquillization for a 5th Q but the Z is 11th
Antiquarianize has a 5th Q but the Z is 13th
Beziques is out
Cazique also
Caziques as well
Disequalization
Disequalize
Disequalizer
Nonequalization
Nonequalized
Nonequalizing
Preequalizing
Tranquilization
Tranquilizations
Tranquilize
Tranquilized
Tranquilizer
Tranquilizers
Tranquilizes
Tranquilizing
Tranquilizingly
Tranquilization
Tranquilizations
Tranquillize
Tranquillized
Tranquillizer
Quintessentializing has a 16th Z, but alas, the q came first
Non-specializing (too bad it’s a hypenated word) for a 12th Z
Colloquialize has the z in the right spot but no v
Colloquializer is in the same boat
Retranquilize
Sequentialize
Sequentialized
Sequentializes
Sequentializing
Untranquilize
Untranquilized
Untranquilizing
Untranquillize
Untranquillized
Ventriloquize
Ventriloquized
Ventriloquizes
Ventriloquizing
So it looks like Equestrianize was the only clear winner. I’ll be honest though, with the Q, two Z’s and V where they are – it was an ugly proposition from the start. If you take into mind how you normally fill these alphabets by putting the letter in the first time and omitting it any following times as you fill then none of these will work.
Oh well. I’m 100% sure there is an additive and 95% sure there is no transposition but I think I need to reconsider things a little since this looks like a dead-end.
Look, if WIRED can use Kryptos filler then so can I. I’m still trying to figure out where to go with things. It’s tempting to try a transposition with the 98 letters instead of the 97 and see if I can get the KR-YP-T-OS to line up. Probably a dumb idea but I’ve got nothing better to try…
The National Security Archive was the one to let everyone know we could read what was already online. Artist rendering and link in the following image:
It’s a little highfalutin at times but it’s fun to read and see how he did it.
In case you didn’t catch it with the WIRED link or the CIA link or the stacks of paper links, here it is one more time to the account of David Stein on how he solved the first 3 parts:
David Stein solves first three parts of Kryptos Link – Click here
Funny how this never showed up in my FOIA even though it was approved for release in 2009. Hmm…
Not a new proposition but maybe a new way of considering it?
Okay, so he’s autistic, he’s bi-polar, he’s depressed, he’s Asperger’s, he’s social anxiety; he’s a lot of things.
Okay, so he notices everything. That’s a given, he’ll notice the mud on your shoes and the boogers in your nose and the texture of your hair. But that’s not all, in order to find out everything about you he has to observe and deduce everything about you and everyone else in the room and everything in the room – always and everywhere. There is so much information pouring into his senses constantly that he would literally lose his mind and go insane.
Let’s say he doesn’t, let’s say he’s a high-functioning autistic who can actually absorb and process all of this.
The problem becomes one of signal-to-noise ratios.
They say with the CIA and the NSA that all it takes is one attack getting through. They can win 999 times but if even 1 gets through then it is catastrophic failure. Problem is that how are they to know which threats are real, which are just words, and what bits of intel are pertinent and what is the time window for their relevance. People like Holmes because he’s smart and they think he never loses and is never wrong. This is patently untrue but let’s say he’s aiming for that 99.9%. How the fuck is he supposed to determine what is a clue (signal) out of everything that happens ever (noise)? How could he ever possibly know that the length of that man’s nose is predicative of a potential genetic connection to that woman he saw 6 weeks ago who was at that party where the waiter was serving White Russians which was the clue he needed to find the missing jewels? How does he provide enough evidence that would satisfy the lawyers in the FBI that it was worth trying the case?
So there are some fairly common connections between Holmes and the 3-letter abbreviations. It’s fun at first because he’s not a cop, he’s better than a cop and can do things police can’t, follow leads they can’t, but how at the end of the day can he overcome the pitfalls facing the feds? In the end, he’s got similar strengths and weaknesses, a lot of the same moral/ethical questions, and suddenly becomes much more complicated than 1 really clever detective.
Just something to think about…
This one is my favorite and was originally going to get posted on the 1st but I thought there was a chance people would think I was kidding so here it is on the 2nd.
I like that the double letters mostly line up on the right hand side.
I like that NYPVTT stays intact.
I like that you could potentially swap some of the rows around as long as you kept the ? and NYPVTT where they are. I’m not saying he’d do that because it would be a little weird to do that kind of transposition.
It feels like it’s half of a 14×14 grid so maybe he originally conceived it as the CT on one side and the keyword on the other, a sort of literary recreation of the sculpture proper.
Maybe there’s some kind of mirroring effect. Like ?OBKRUO-SOTPYRK. That would be more in keeping with the copperplate arrangement. I wonder if that’s why my initial efforts to strip off an additive didn’t work. Maybe I just didn’t get the setup right? Worth a shot but I think I’m grasping at straws a little. =)
Here’s a minor interruption to introduce isograms and discuss one aspect of their relevance in Kryptos.
An isogram is a word that doesn’t repeat a letter.
I was trying to find words to fill my proto-foursquare grids and isograms seem to be a really nifty way of trying to work around some of the problems I’ve been having. Meaningful possible candidates for keywords that you don’t have to drop a letter as you go to use?
There are a lot of isograms out there but I needed a 15 letter one without an A. Might as well try and find a unicorn!
For those of us who like to have fun with words, here are some of the longer ones:
11 letters
12 letters
13 letters
14 letters
15 letters
16 letters
So the search continues but trying to find a non-isogram that resolves to 15 letters without the use of an A seems a trifle…unlikely.
So after gridding out Kryptos K4, an idea occurred to me.
Perhaps my additive was right but wrong. If it fits as a grid then maybe lining up SOTPYRK would be similar to the CT on the left and decryption thingy on the right found in the copperplate proper. It’s a stretch but humor me for the next couple weeks. If you’re not interested, check back in 3 months =)
Alright so we line up the potential Kryptos additive…
Yay
And then we take a look at how the foursquare would look:
What a looker!
-Kryptosfan
Here’s the other way of trying to find the keywords
Super awesome
I know you were wondering what this one looked like
We all were
