After noting the ability to spell out Kryptos but aligning the ends of K4, I pieced them together into rings and looked for any revelations that came out of it. I switched lines 2 and 3 after flipping line 2 around. While I was able to align the word Kryptos, not much else was revealed. There are two possible “OS” fragments to use and neither seemed to reveal any other words that might be useful.
This is what it looked like:
I made it with several circles of paper with different diameters.
Held together by a regular brad.
This allowed me to shift the letters around between the rows of K4
This made it possible to find the keyword KRYPTOS between the rows. I found 2 possible combinations:
I wasn’t 100% convinced it was going to work so I wasn’t too disappointed when the startling solution of K4 was not revealed. It proved my idea and it was fun to do. I think I’ll be content with that much.
Another good attempt and a happy failure of sorts. Back to the drawing board…
I’ve been playing with the idea of using the cipher wheel having wondered whether the compass rose is indicating this as a cryptological method to be applied to K4.
Using two wheels and a simple alphabet arrangement its interesting that when you line T on one wheel (as in “T is your position”) with R of the second wheel that the letters A and Y are also aligned (RAY being superscripted on the sculpture, RAY also being a form of light as in “inserted the candle”).
Also interesting is if we insert an H (which holds a normal alignment within the superscripted YAR to make YAHR) to the morse plaintext “T is your position” we now get “This is your position”. Is this a clue that we are to use the compass rose as a cipher wheel or simply a coincedence?
How would we use the cipher wheel? Is a digital interpretation required? Do we convert the ciphertext letters into binary and use their value to perform a calculation? Could the compass rose be clock arithmetic?
Is the phrase “digital interpretation” inscripted on the compass rose copper plate for a reason? With Binary representing twofold and also being a digital interpretation could the compass rose also represent a system of two, as in to be used twice in the solution of Kryptos?
Z
What a unique idea! It would be nice to pull some meaning out of the Morse code besides the strange phrases. Have you tried building them yet?
I tried a little binary math on the Morse code and I think I had some links for converting text to binary and another for doing math if it helps. It’s a little outside my expertise so I had to cheat.
From what I understand Sanborn used stuff like compasses and lodestones before but I could be wrong. All this means is we have to consider the likelihood that it is or isn’t important to solving Kryptos.
I’m not an expert but I think cipher wheels act as a sort of mechanical substitution cipher.
I think we would need some more indications, if we were supposed to use binary, of what to do with it so your best bet may be re-examining the rest of the Morse code and plain-text of K1-3 for hints and tips from Sanborn that can be applied to binary or cipher wheels.
I haven’t tried all of what you’re suggesting but in separate efforts I’ve tried some of it. I didn’t have much luck. My advice is to give it some thoughtful effort for a little while and if it seems like it’s working, keep going and if not, then try something different. I’m open to helping in any way you need. Initially, I would say all you need is some paper, scissors and a some binary conversions but if you run into a speed-bump feel free to mention it and between me and anyone else reading we can give some help so you can properly test your ideas.
I don’t know about you but sometimes it’s just nice to have tried it, even if it didn’t work, it was still a good idea that you were proud of and hoped would work. I think you should see if you’re right. At least give it a whirl just for kicks and giggles anyways… just look at all the weird crap I’ve tried! Good luck! Don’t forget to tell if/when you’ve solved K4 so we can stop trying. How sad would that be? To keep working on it because you miss the news it was solved, that sounds horrible.
Did you ever try reversing the text so RKBO? would be the inside circle?
I didn’t. I thought about it briefly but it seemed more aesthetically pleasing to have it on the outside. Plus I would need to re-order the rings in the reverse as well… I was working on the idea that you could spell Kryptos if you lined the rings up.
This would imply that K4 could be solved with a transposition and the only way that’s possible with ciphertext with the letter frequencies K4 has is to grab the thesaurus and get creative with the message to intentionally distort the letter frequencies. My cipher wheel idea (and I assume others have tried as well) would work simply by transposition.
A very nice idea I’ll admit but considering the Kryptos creators comments about K1 and 2 being similar, K3 being different and K4 being different; I’d encourage anyone to pursue a different solution attempt.
I’ve been hooked on spelling kryptos like you have, hoping that it was part of the solution. I’ll try to put my idea to work and I’ll let you know.
What about aligning them like a clock? They keep talking about time in the interviews all the time. You’d have 9 rings if you put a letter at each number on the clock.
The problem is that just gives you a transposition without dealing with the obscured text. Maybe after we get past the masking it would be good to consider but it won’t get us anywhere just yet.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.