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.
Hello from Spain
I prefer to return to the beginning: Vigenère and 2 discs
The Vigenère Cipher exists in different forms, such as a rectangular matrix with 26 shifted alphabets (tabula recta) and as two concentric discs with a full alphabet each
The Vigenère Cipher disc is therefore sometimes called the Alberti Disc or Alberti Cipher because the first well-documented description of a polyalphabetic cipher however, was made around 1467 by Leon Battista Alberti (56 years before Blaise de Vigenère was born).
it is made up of two disks with the normal alphabet around the circumference of one and a mixed up alphabet around the smaller disk. They rotate on a center pin so a different cipher alphabet can be used each time the disk is rotated. The inventor suggested changing the cipher every 3rd or 4th word by writing a capital letter in the cipher text. Other ways to use the disk is to have the sender and receiver of a cipher message agree on a starting position (for example, align the “A” to the “G”) then decipher the first letter of the message. Use that deciphered letter to rotate to the “A” and decipher the next letter, and so on. These methods don’t require any special key, other than the starting letter. Using letters within a message to change the cipher is called autokey.
Another way to use the cipher disk is to have an agreed on keyword or phrase, such as the Confederate Army keywords of “Complete Victory” or “Manchester Bluffs”. Using normal text as a keyword is an aid to the cryptanalysis, however, since the keyword can be decrypted in parallel with the plaintext message.
Source: http://ciphermachines.com/types
ADDENDA
Usually, the letters of the keyword determine how many places the inner disc should be shifted. In most cases, the outer disc and the (smaller) inner disc both contain the alphabet in the usual order. Sometimes, however, the alphabet on the inner disc was printed in reverse order and sometimes it contained a scrambled alphabet.
Furthermore, the application of the disc varies. It can be used as a simple shift cipher by shifting a fixed number of positions, or as an advanced alphabetic or polyalphabetic substitution cipher, by using a key word or phrase to determine the number of shifts.
SOURCE http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/vigenere/
A good example of the Vigenère Cipher is the Confederate Cipher Disk that was used as a field cipher during the American Civil War (1861-1865). On each of the discs, the Latin alphabet is written out clockwise in the usual order (A-Z). The discs share a common axle, so that the inner disc can be rotated.
SOURCE http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/usa/ccd/index.htm
The same cipher disc was used during the Spanish-American War of 1898, when a paper-based version of it was included in the Giddings Field Message-Book. It was a smal A6-size booklet with a green leather cover and a short pencil………..The Giddings Field Message Book was a small pocket book with a multi-page note pad and a built-in US Army Cipher Disk. It was intended for use in the field by soldiers who needed to issue secure messages.
+Picture and additional info:
+ Charles Wheatstone, has another cipher machine named after him, a type of Vigenère disk with extra numbers added, but it was invented 50 years earlier by Col. Decius Wadsworth in 1817. He displayed his “Cryptograph” at the Paris Exposition of 1867. It was a cipher disk whose outer plaintext alphabet and inner ciphertext alphabet have different number of elements for polyalphabetic substitution. (A weakpoint of this device was discovered only four years thereafter.)
+ Finally a Danish military cipher device : URKRYPTOGRAFEN or The “Clock Cryptograph” is basically a nicely implemented Wheatstone cipher disk. It was in active use in the Danish armed forces from 1934 (or a little earlier) until around 1948.
Basically identical with the Wheatstone cipher disk the outer ring is made of paper and carries the written mixed ciphertext alphabet. This paper ring is removable and should be changed often within a given cipher net. In the back of the device is room for a number of alphabet rings. For each 360 degree turn of the rings, the outer ring moves one step (letter) further than the inner ring. The rings must always be turned in the direction of the arrow.
SOURCE http://www.jproc.ca/crypto/crypto_watch.html
+ There are many variants. but I prefer to begin by the Spanish-American War of 1898 cipher disc, logically, with a paper and a short pencil.
Thought-provoking writing – I was fascinated by the specifics . Does anyone know if my company can grab a blank TX RS Intake Sheet Form example to use ?