
The game developer, the CIA, and the sculpture driving them crazy - teamonkey
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-08-the-game-developer-the-cia-and-the-sculpture-driving-them-crazy
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dsl
I had the chance to look at Kryptos out a window, and it is an impressive
piece of art. However, the CIA museum on campus is nothing short of mind
blowing and was always the highlight of my visits. [https://www.cia.gov/about-
cia/cia-museum](https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum)

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eldude
Seems like the K1 solution, "BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT
LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION", is potentially in reference to his (then not yet
built) Cyrillic Projector[1] sculpture and possibly a play on the word
occlusion and/or a reference to Ambient Occlusion[2] given Sanborn's direct
interest:

"After Kryptos, he went onto a segment of his work where he was fascinated by
the way light was projected onto things," says Dunin. "He went out into the
southwest of the US at the middle of the night and he'd beam a pattern of
light onto a mountain and use time-lapse photography to record it. There's
dozens and dozens of pictures. They look like they're made in computer
graphics, but they're Sanborn beaming light on mountains."

Given K2 also seems to be referential back to other Sanborn works, my guess is
that the clues/keys lie in his other works... Interesting stuff.

[1]
[http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/6/8/1/6/7/0/the-...](http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/6/8/1/6/7/0/the-
game-developer-the-cia-and-the-sculpture-driving-them-crazy-140188824284.jpg)

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billyhoffman
Elonka has given some great talks about Kryptos, and other Sanborn sculptures
over the years at hacker cons like Phreaknic.

[http://www.elonka.com/kryptos/ppt/index.html](http://www.elonka.com/kryptos/ppt/index.html)

She also enjoys cracking the "codes" given out at these conferences, usually
printed on the backs of badges, etc. She has a great walk through on how she
has done this, which are pretty cool. Layers upon layers upon layers:

[http://elonka.com/mirrors/AOL/Nova1337/tutorial.htm](http://elonka.com/mirrors/AOL/Nova1337/tutorial.htm)

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agscala
I wonder if the Q in IQLUSION is notable, in K3 it mentions:

    
    
        FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q ?
    

and in K2:

    
    
        X THIRTY EIGHT DEGREES FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES SIX POINT FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY SEVEN DEGREES EIGHT MINUTES FORTY FOUR SECONDS WEST X LAYER TWO
    

Maybe the location in K2 is related to the position of the Q in K1 somehow.

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centizen
It's possible, but I think that it is more likely that they were placed there
to make it more difficult to crack the cipher via character frequency
analysis.

Then again, I suppose there isn't any reason that it couldn't be both.

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chiph
Jim Sanborn's other encrypted sculpture, Cyrillic Projector, is located on the
campus of the University of North Carolina Charlotte. It has a lamp inside
that shines through mirror-image Cyrillic text so that when the letters hit
the building they're facing the right way.

I saw it a few years ago, and it's intriguing. I went on a Saturday afternoon
and had no problems with campus security. Not sure what would happen if you
showed up late at night.

[https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=35.306013,-80.729261&s...](https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=35.306013,-80.729261&spn=0.001418,0.00213&sll=35.306244,-80.729493&sspn=0.000709,0.001065&oq=unc+charlotte+bu&t=h&z=19)

From a construction aspect, it's cool how he was able to get the letters cut
in the steel (it's 1" thick), presumably with a water jet, and then get the
panels curved without distorting them.

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switch33
Can we get layout of if you stand at x degrees from statue facing y angle what
the text reads. I can't get around the fact that it's curved. There must be a
reason that it is curved. Also the x's and q's could mean something like re-
placing the organization of the messages to a surface with those angles with
x's on one side and q's on the other.

If you overlay the solved messages on the same bent surface with that type of
curve you also get different results.

The reason for it being curved that way is if you stare at it from certain
angles it is probably several more puzzles (based on field of view). The
fourth box is probably made of more than just the 3 earlier puzzles solved but
instead by different angle view puzzles. This would of course make it
misleading to try to use the first three puzzles to solve the fourth.

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Fuxy
This kinda bugs me on the binary route. What binary representation is she
referring to as being tried. Is it plain old binary with every symbol
representing a 1 or a 0 or is it hexadecimal encoded binary or decimal encoded
binary.

There's just so many ways to represent binary.

Would that remove any patterns you would normally find?

She is right there's just an infinite way to approach this problem. :)

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cel1ne
Maybe the angle where each letter sits is important. Since the whole thing
seems to cover half a circle/cylinder.

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teamonkey
That's what I thought. The precise point 150m away seems very relevant. I
wonder if anyone's just tried shining a light at it from that point?

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switch33
Exactly, if he made it that kind of shape it's about the shape being the last
part to the 4th part than anything else.

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switch33
Maybe the 4th puzzle is actually the whole thing should be wrapped around. And
it's not 97 characters but instead the resulting number of characters of all 4
square puzzles?

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DeepAperture
If cryptography is broken before implementation, then you are going to have to
search "before" Kryptos was implemented.

~~~
switch33
Other parts of his work indeed could be missing parts to the equation of the
4th part as well, but if he did so many of these and most of them have been
solved on their own. It is probably solve-able by itself without the other
statues.

