The Question of the ? Mark in Kryptos

And just what are we to do with that pesky ? mark at the beginning of K4 of Kryptos?

So here’s the thing, we already know from eons ago via the James Sanborn question and answer session that we are to look at K4 as both 97 and 98 letters.  That has always bothered me in the past when people suggested it in the past because the ? mark is clearly the end of K3, why would it be part of K4?

Well, thanks to the past efforts of Jas, we now know that there is no transposition in K4.  This means that you could set up the K3 transposition to not have to worry about that pesky ? mark.  You could simply paste it to the front of K4 because it will stay a ? mark through any substitution.  It’s a fairly clever and yet very simple way to confuse people as well.  K4 is 98 characters but only translates to a 97 letter message in the end.

Doesn’t mean you can’t use the 98 letters to do a polybius-based substitution however.

A nice, matrix-based substitution method that would fit wonderfully into the other methods used in Kryptos…

-Kryptosfan