Seriously, aside from seeing clearly plaintext letter frequencies, I’m not really sure what I’d analyze the strings of letters for exactly.
Has anyone thought of ideas for how to tell if they’ve even gotten past the masking technique? We need some kind of method for knowing if we’re on the right track, otherwise how can you tell if you’re making any progress?
Again the Berlin clock clue:
I believe, that this clock is a clue to the text of K2.
You remember: “Who knows the exact location? Only WW. This was his last message.”
So the exact location is the location, where the Berlin clock stood in 1996, before it has
changed its position. The Berlin clock stood nearby the UNDERGROUND railway!!!
Any questions? Maybe this should say us, that we have to search at/in the underground
railway. Mr. Sanborn has said, that the latest clue leads to even deeper places. What
place could be deeper than the Berlin underground railway? After the clock was removed,
there was something buried at that original postition near or in the underground railway,
maybe the final clue to solve to whole puzzle.
So the latest clue leads to the old position of the clock and this leads us to the underground
railway. This seems so clear now. KRYPTOS has become a Geocaching adventure!
These are my latest thoughts from today. First I thought, that there is maybe another clock or another object involved, but the more I think about it, the more it seems crazy to me. Now I’m
pretty sure, that the old position of the clock comes into play here!
Btw, the Berlin clock is the only clock in Berlin that has changed its (exact) position, as far as
I know. The exact location is: 52° 30′ 09.22” N – 13° 19′ 31.83”
So lets visit Berlin and find something interesting in the underground railway near the old
postition of the Berlin clock.
It would be nice to get some reply to my latest theory about the Berlin Clock.
Frank Schneider
The Berlin Clock is complete misdirection by Sanborn.
Thanks for your reply.
That were my first thoughts too – complete misdirection. There must be another clock or
another object and I found one immediately that fits at first sight. But at second sight, it
doesn’t. And it was tooooo easy; that’s not a Sanborn and that’s not KRYPTOS.
So the hunt goes on. The clock clue must be much deeper, than we all think. Sanborn
said, that there’s a lot of fodder there. That means, it needs time to discover.
There are now other theories in my brain that I will not publish at the moment. I need more
time to improve. O.k., the comment above about something buried there, when the clock was
removed in 1996 is stupid. But I’m confident, that there is something to discover in the
underground railway. Maybe we have to take a look at the back side of the clock?
And last but not least, there is only ONE Berlin Clock and this clock is in The Guinness Book
of Records (!!!). And Dieter Binninger was a very interesting person, he was a mastermind.
He died just a few months after the dedication of KRYPTOS by a plane crash (!!!).
At the moment, I am absolutely convinced, that this digital Berlin clock with its set theory
is the key to solve K4/K5. I don’t know, but every clue, Jim gives, destroys my old theories
and I have to start at the beginning again. Absolutely frustrating!
We’ll see!
Frank Schneider
PS: What about this:
From ancient cipher systems (Vigenere) to the morse code and from the morse code to the
modern digital age (with the first public digital clock in Berlin as a clue)?
Except you’d have to already solve K4 to know about a “berlin clock” and that it’s somehow necessary to solve K4. It’s circular reasoning. Everyone has missed the obvious with his clue…but I’ll let you figure that one out 🙂
Good answer. How would “Berlin Clock” reveal any more of the solution if “Berlin” on it’s own did not?
K4 is solvable without either of the two clues. Going to Berlin and looking at clocks or underground railway stations is chasing shadows.
Berlin clock is much more specific than BERLIN alone. Berlin is just a place and clock is just an object. So first Jim gave you the place and then the object. Place + object = location but Place + ? = ?
Why do you always just post cryptic posts as if you know the answer to k4 and yet go nowhere with it. Stop yanking our chain and maybe yourself for that matter.
I don’t always post cryptic posts, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis.
If there is any letter frequency with a value close to 13, another close to 9, 3 close to 8, and another 3 close to 6 it’s a good bet that you’re looking at something close to plain english. My guess is that given we have 2 C’s a B and a K we’ll have a lower IC than expected. Look at the relationship of the cracked L’s and C’s… notice anything reminiscent of the standard alphabet?
I think, the letter frequency will come into play, when the “BERLINCLOCK” clue has been
discovered.
FS
I wonder if the Roman numerals and the like have anything to do with the code?
The underground in Berlin is also not that far fetched.
Just because someone has the idea quickly doesn’t mean it is wrong.
Helio from Spain
Gentlemen, I have two suggestions
1) Sometimes to solve the problem of a clock is necessary another watch.
kkkkkkk, wwwwww, uuuuuu, vvv, xx, qqqq, jjj…..The final letters of the alphabet are too numerous, he has used unusual characters, it seems the result of a polyalphabetic cipher with 2 disc, something like a clock.
I Remember, given a section of English language, E, T, A and O are the most common, while Z, Q and X are rare.
2) Where was Jim Sanborn in the 80s? Does he had a German friend?
Erich John (6 February 1932) is a German Designers who became internationally known for the design of the Urania World Clock on Alexanderplatz in Berlin.
In 1982 he was appointed to the Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio), Department of Industrial Design, as a visiting professor.
Source (in german): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_John
There a possible way that Jim Sanborn can personally know and interact with him in Ohio or other place of the United States in the eighties.
But this is more difficult to confirm.
Maybe some of the readers may say something about this assumption
Bye
JSP.
Let me first say, I don’t know the answer, but I think I can offer a different perspective.
Let’s analyze the berlinclock clue, and translate it to usable Sanbornese. The overall theme to Sanborn’s clues is that they are factual statements, but often they answer different questions than we thought we asked. Notice how Sanborn rarely uses our K(x) taxonomy when discussing “the last 97or 98” characters. He deliberately toys with this ambiguity through his “K4 is standalone, but K5 requires 1-4”. Notice how we all assume, without support, that he is talking about K4 with the Berlin Clock. Hold that thought for a second, and notice another big Sanborn clue theme: “it’s not what it is, but rather where it is that’s important. Sanborn seems all too willing to offer ever longer cribs, as long as they are after position #63. We all know he is a master of illusion, and manipulating our perspective- he is after all, an artist, not a cryptographer, and a pretty good one. So’s Scheidt, (but in his case, we have an artistic cryptographer-the most dangerous kind)
The entire clue is get us to realize that K4 is a reflection of K1 in the water. K1 is 63 characters. If reassembling this reflection, K4 is also 63, and thus any characters after that may serve another, as yet undetermined purpose. So it now seems pretty clear that Sanborn thinks he can spot us the whole 35 character string beginning with BERLINCLOCK, and as long as he preserves the mystery of the 63, we’re not much better off.
So restated, the clue says: Before you are going to be able to use the clue in the context I intended, you will have to focus on the element that I placed right before the element I called attention to. I propose thinking of “K4” as 63 + 34 or 35. Just throwing it out there and in my opinion there are some brilliant thinkers on this particular post of K-Fan’s.
I don’t think of BERLINCLOCK as a clue at all. I think the mask is bound to have some connection to what’s going on in K0-K3 and it doesn’t require you to solve any of those portions specifically. An agent in the field, knowing how to look at the sculpture would know where to look and what to do to pull the mask off K4. At that point I expect it to be as cut and dry as solving K1. Thanks for the blog, Kfan.
I wish it was as “cut and dry” and you say Morpheus. Even after knowing the mask the solution is not easy to solve.
I neglected to say I liked Tim’s observation about the number 63 as if Sanborn’s clue itself doesn’t help much, but the location in the string is absolutely telling.
Iris, I was just trying to think from the agent’s point of view that going in with some kind of preparation makes it all cut and dry. That isn’t to say there isn’t usefulness in solving the K0-K3 portions.
I’m imagining the agent might know the following: 1) look for the last ?-mark, 2) decode message using table, 3) pull key of predetermined length from predetermined location of code block. While we’re all stuck guessing what WW knows or what Tut has to do with it, the agent is already smoking his kippers.
I am sorry Morpheus. I wasn’t trying to attack you previous comment. If anything I admire your straight to the point posts. It is just that even though I have a pretty good idea what the mask is, from there it is still no easy task.
I couldn’t also help to laugh reading the “pull key of predetermined length from predetermined location”. It sounds like Sherlock Holmes rephrasing the “pulling it out of your ass” phrase. 🙂
Great reading Morpheus and please keep posting.
Hi Tim
I will try to connect your 63 theory to a Monet Observation #10 at http://www.sfu.ca/~nicolea/kryptos/observationsOriginal.htm
Prime marking on the petrified tree total to 63 (3+7+11+19+23), which is also 1+2+4+8+16+32 which relates to the processing of the water clock.
Thanks
Jeff
Another of many theories in my head:
CLOCK means TIME. There is a CLOCK OF FLOWING TIME in Berlin (Uhr der fließenden Zeit). This clock is placed very near the Berlin clock. It’s a WATER CLOCK. A water clock is called “CLEPSYDRA” (Greek) and has a long history back to the Ancient Egypt. So there is an interesting background story and a lot of fodder.
The word CLEPSYDRA fits perfect in the scheme of KRYPTOS, PALIMPSEST and ABSCISSA.
And the Ancient Egypt is also part of the decoded text on the copper wall (K3).
So maybe the mechanism behind the water clock or the clock of flowing time in particular tells us something about the decoding mechanism behind KRYPTOS?
Frank Schneider
…ANDTHECLOCKOFFLOWINGTIMESHOWSTHEWAY
Just a thought 🙂
FS
Does anyone know how to submit an solution or even email Mr Sanborn?
I am finding it very odd that even if someone had the solution there is no way of actually verifying it.
I know that there use to be a website kryptosclue but that was shut down over a year ago.
I have also been told that he only accepts emails and a will only reply if a $50 fee is paid but to what email address?
Are we sure part of K4 isn’t his address details as it seems quite a puzzle on it’s own to obtain them.
Thanks in advance for any help.
This is the email address that was listed with the website. Hope it helps.
jsanbornkryptos@gmail.com
I’ve never seen anyone mention…
starting w/ plaintext replacing the encrypted… top lines 1-14 and bottom 1b-14b
end of 9b AT (deTAils)
7b T (hoT)
5b N (aNd)
1b S (remainS)
14 O (twO)
9 L (exactLy)
6 U (anUknown)
4 T (magneT)
2 ION (IqlusION)
could be scrabble… I don’t know
and for some reason… I believe what everyone has been calling k1 is really k2 and has something to do w/ the “layertwo” (got the idea after watching nova?)
ixwelyoiecbaqk and cbaqkixwelyoie both work (kryptos alphabet) for “theberlinclock” and I believe “Big” appeared after one of them… could indicate “big ben”? elyoi(q) is marked on his handwritten papers… misdirection?
reversing the kryptos alphabet thdbasnzdjr will get “berlinclock” and nearly the same scattered letters as the key above…enigmatoy wants to pop out
only heard about kryptos a month ago… this site has been invaluable
don’t know if any of this is helpful… I’m stuck and sharing what I can
and has anyone gotten anything from the 1-14 lines mirroring in length?
oh and how about his crossing off the letters A and S under the X’s in his handwritten stuff? could that be the removal of passage debris?
CLOCK HOPS, anyone?
Just a random thought.
What if K4’s masking technique is neither addition nor subtraction, but rather a Vigenere cipher, akin to the one that is used in K1 and K2?
Remember Sanborn’s K1 decryption sheet in the NY Times? As has been widely noted, the tick under the sequence ELYOI(Q) can be seen as a Vigenere-based clue to the plain text word BERLIN.
What if ELYOI is also a Vigenere-based masking technique for the part of the cipher text that follows the word BERLIN? That sequence starts with MZFPKWGDK. From Sanborn himself we know that the first five of its characters, namely MZFPK, decrypt to CLOCK.
If we decrypt this sequence MZFPKWGDK with a Quagmire3 cipher with primary key word KRYPTOS and indicator key ELYOI, and then do a second decryption with indicator key XLOIE (a slight variant of ELYOI), then we arrive at the plain text CLOCK HOPS.
Most likely, this is just a coincidence, but to me it sticks out as a pretty evocative reference to the digetal workings of the Berlin Clock a.k.a Mengenlehreuhr.
Of course, the length of the mask and the length of any subsequent key(s) should ideally be relatively prime, and at the very least not be identical, as in the decryption attempt above. That’s one obvious reason that speaks against it. Another very obvious reason is that neither key is an English word.
Have fun!
We know that English can be revealed through various analysis techniques performed on an entire cipher text. But, if the plain text of K4 was divided into n parts, and each part was encrypted with a different keyword, and then the individual parts of the resulting cipher text were put back together to make K4 appear to be one puzzle, the English would be masked because the results of any analysis on the entire cipher text would be bogus.
I seem to remember something about Ed Scheidt saying figure out the masking technique, then go for the puzzle. So, there must be clues in K1-K3 about the masking technique, i.e. how K4 is divided.
I know that Morse code has something to do with it
letters with one dot and one dash A,N
One dot and two dash KWG
one dot and three dash J,y,Q
two dots and one dash D,U,R
2dots , 2 dash C,X, P,C
3dot , one dash B,F,LV
dots only E, I, S H
dash only T,M.O
Then look at K-4
I’m just sayin’
I went further with the idea, there are 8 categories of letters in Morse. Bobby Fischer invented a chess timing idea in the 90’s (clock?) could these be chess moves in his famous confrontation with Boris?
RKBQKBKR
as in Rook to Queen 4 or whatever?
According to Wikipedia, it’s called a chess clock
This is a musical idea. If I label the Morse categories with numbers
1=a,n
2-=K,w,g
3=j,Y,q
4-=d,u,R
5=c,x,P,z
6=b,f,l,V
7=e,i,S,h
8=T,m,O
You would have Kryptos 5(V), in music 8 is the same as 1, so you would have a musical scale.
Now take the Johnny Rivers song “Secret Agent Man” and notice it has 24 bars of 4 beats, with a intro of one bar? or outro ?
It would be funny if this was the deeper meaning!
EAEEEEABB
EEAAEAEA
BEBEABEE
I tried adding “Yellow Brick Road” to the beginning of K-4
OBKRUOXOGHULBSO
YELLOWBRICKROAD
(NG)(UD) J(K)L Z (G)PK (F)D (QTS)
The G is actually F and the F is G and QTS is TQS
but that is really close to other groups in K-4 don’t ya think?
I guess that means “WW” could be the “Wonderful Wizard”
OBKRUOXOGHULBSO
YELLOWBRICKROAD
NGWDJLZGPKFDQTS
compare to
d(ia)winf(bnypvtt)mzfpk(w)gdkzxtj
I think that’s close enough for a bingo
It also appears that it is in alternating groups of 7 so the initial (?) must be number 1 ?
Ok, I put the letters into 14 groups of 7 starting with the (?)
I am supposing that there are 2 groups of 7×7
Further that they combine to make a message of 49 letters
If the rule is you have to use double letters then two end letters would have to be combined also
So on bnypvtt I added (NF), (MO) an end and start letter, and (OT) to get Berlin (b unused)
which is great but how do you know for certain what is next?
This is what it looks like
?OBKRUO SOLI(FB)(B P)RNGKSS
QSSEKZZ DIAWI(NF) MZFPKWG
DIGKUHU
XOGHULB WFLRVQQ (OT)WTQSJ
WATJKLU B(NYPVTT) DKZXTJC
AUEKCAR
It should have been in the last comment NF,BP,OT, would get Berlin. As you can see if this is correct then there is still a lot of work to do.
I’m thinking the (?) is a wild card
I don’t know what anyone else got trying my idea but I came up with the deeper meaning “SUCKERS”
The word Berlin is just a clue
I used 18 plain texts and added 40+40 encrypted to get
Q do we sique,U,I CIA, KGB, the klue Berlin, follow the yellow brik Kansoz-Oz
UBDK Q
I think that last part is road somehow but feel free to check or improve!
Here is a refinement;
?OLIBKUFUOEKKCKQR
UHOGQTHIJXJLNBDAW
OWANSFCOEOOWYEORO
UO-SO-SS-GH-NY-PV-TT-
WT-RV-SS-MZ-NF-BP-OT-
RI-KK-LL-TH-BE-RL-IN-
DK-ZX-TJ-CA-AR-
ZD-WG-WI-FP-KR-
DO-WE-QS-IQ-LL
Plain text
Q CIA KGB KLU, B,Z,UE,S W
Q Do we,(CIA,KGB) sique Kansoz, follow the yellow brik rows klu, Berlin (?)
There may still be a couple errors but it still works out the same except sique might be siqgue
K4 should be plain English. There’s no indication that everything will be misspelled. Besides, it doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t know what clues Sanborn put in so I have to work backwards to answer that. He did freak out about “rows ” showing up by mistake in “ID by rows” and he was”surprised that some effect wasn’t achieved” in aerial views of the work. Again WW must be Wonderful Wizard etc.
I looked in Webster’s dictionary and discovered that the word Clock and the word cloak come from the same ancestor Bell. as in bell shaped garment and bell tower (?)
Maybe I misinterpreted it myself. if it’s a Q and an A then it might in plain English say;
Do we (CIA, KGB) seek Kansoz? Follow the yellow brick rows clue Berlin
Maybe K-4 is just a klue for K-5(?)
I’ll try and make it as plain as I can this time. The (?) is a T
KCAR?OB
NBKRUH
YELLOWB
(KR)
UOSOLI
WTRVOE
RIKKAN
FB(BP)
IQ
OS
R(N)GK(SS)
W —- U
O—G-F
QSSEK
XSSJL
OLLOW
Z
(ZD)(I)
A
(W)(I)(NF)(MZ)(FP)
K
(WG)(D)(I)(G)
K
D
O
(U)(H)(U)(X)(O)
GHU
MZJ
THE
(L)(B)((W)
FL(RV)
WL
CX
QQ
A
RQ
(OT)(WT)(Q)(S)(J)(W)(A)
TJ-KLU-B
UI
OR-KLU-B
NYPVTT
NFBPOT
BERLIN
DKZXT=J
ZDWGU
DOWEO-J
CA(U)(E)
FP
IQ
Q Do we follow the yellow brik rows,klue Berlin Kansoz-
kgb,kgb cia,iq,oz X
(?)
Theintegrityoftheuprightguidesthembuttheunfaithfularedestroyedbytheirduplicityproverbseleventhree
A few pointers as some of you misunderstand things and are going in the wrong direction
Jim Sanborn will never ever give you a clue that helps to solve Kryptos and neither will the CIA guy. They will only ever give you clues to send you in the wrong direction, it’s the CIA not Sesame Street. Sanborn said “it is virtually impossible for Schneidt to solve K4” and that’s with Scneidt providing the know how. If Schneidt can’t solve it how can you ? Perhaps you will have a Eureka moment. There are no clues in anything either of them say, there is only contradiction, and that’s their job, to send you in the wrong direction. The clues are in Kryptos, to an either solvable K4 or a hoax. The setting is to resemble the world after a nuclear war or other catastrophe, nothing else is left, no humans to give you clues. Perhaps the answer to K4 is the reality that not all encrypted messages can be broken, only JS knows if that is so.
Lets assume though that they have told the truth when they say they used masking. For those of you saying the Vigenére used on K1 and K2 is masking it’s not. Obviously anything changed to look like something else is masked but that is not masking. Masking in this context means the use of steganography (the practice of concealing messages or information within other non-secret text or data). Or, shave the head of your messenger, write you message on his bald head, let his hair grow back then send him to the recipient in plain sight of your enemy, the message is hidden and only the recipient knows to shave his head,.
What they are saying is the 97 letters of K4 are not the letters you need. You can’t use them in their current form to break K4 using either substitution or transposition or a combination. You may need more letters or less letters or they may need to be in a different order so that it can be broken. You may need numbers, you may need symbols. If you take the first half of the letters in K1 and add them on the end of the second half and try to break K1 using Kryptos and Palimpsest it won’t work, that would be an example of masking, you would need to know first that the first part of K1 is tagged on to the end of the second half. That is what you are looking for, the masking technique, if masking is used, or you will get nowhere.
The clues are in the puzzle. Each step of the way the clues have been provided. BerlinClock is no more a clue than the fact it rained today. K1 clue is Palimpsest, that’s what you are looking at, the Kryptos tableau is also provided. Abscissa is found in the K1 plaintext for the keyword for K2. K2 then provides the clue to K3. IDBYROWS and frequency analysis supports its a a transposition . This has been corrected by Sanborn to read LAYERTWO but I don’t believe that. Palimpsest is 10 letters so you only use 10 alphabet columns, Abscissa is 8 so you only use 8 columns. This limits the cipher letters to approx 4 per plaintext letter. By adding a letter and changing to LAYERTWO that changes one of the letters to 5. That is how it should work I know but is enough for me to believe it’s IDBYROWS and a clue to transposition on K3 if there is a K5 ciphertext hidden behind K1 to K4.
So I believe we have the clues for K4. Can you see anything Q. You are looking for a C, and looking for an I and an A. You are looking for a CIA string. It’s right in front of you using K4 in the order it’s in already but you need to use it to find CIA and line up with the L. If you do this correctly you will see the confirmation you need to know you are going in the right direction. It’s there, I’ve seen it.
About the coordinates (K2). Sanborn said it could refer to two locations (if we choose to believe him). In the times of King Tut the prime meridian was not at Greenwich in the UK. It was at Giza at the site of the Great Pyramids. Latitude 0 is the Equator and has never changed, it is the centre of the earth but longitude 0 (the prime meridian) changed from Giza to Greenwich. If you use the prime meridian of King Tut’s time (k3) the coordinates point to where USS Scorpion was sunk. Is this the secret Sanborn was asked to keep ? Two months earlier the Russian K129 was lost. Some say it was tit for tat and covered up.
If you reverse the coordinates you are taken to the seas off Russia where the USS Halibut tapped the Russian communication lines.
So I don’t think anything is pointing to anything in Berlin at all.
But this is irrelevant if we don’t break K4.
I forgot to say. The first book ever written on Steganograpy ( Steganographia by Johannes Trithemius died 1516.) has been at the Library of Congress since 1940 where Sanborn’s father was the Director of Exhibits and where Sanborn spent a lot of his time growing up, I wonder if he’s read it.
I assigned points to each letter based off of how often it is used. Rare letters are a lot of points, and common letters are low. I forget the formula but I end up looking for a score in a certain range based off of different texts I have thrown in to calibrate it. Its pretty good at narrowing down large possibilities. However given K1-3 have X’s and Q’s thrown in liberally, I had to use a wider range which results in a lot more false positives.