In this post I want to talk about a thing from the Kryptos universe that are not directly related to the statue. But i think it may be an indirect hint to some Kryptos related methods. The Mayan Symbols in Ed Scheidts driveway I think everyone who knows Kryptos knows Ed Scheidt. The former Chairman of the Cryptographic Center at the CIA and founder of the cryptosystems used around the Kryptos statue. As already shown in Part 4 of my Kryptos series, in the driveway of Ed Scheidts house, there are two symbols: Figure 1 - Garage driveway of Ed Scheidt We denote the left symbol set with $S_1$ and the right one with $S_2$. It took me a while to find his house on Google Maps - Street View. To save you some time, here is the link with a view on the driveway. I you go back in time in Streetview, you can see that the symbols were already there in 2012. But it is impossible to say when they were built. $S_1$ is clearly visible from the street, $S_2$ is hidden in the view. But you can u...
Elgar seems to have been so familiar with his cipherbet, that he even was able to quickly write some notes or annotations. Which means, that he either learned this cipherbet by heart or he could quickly deduce the corresponding cipher symbol from a given letter. And if so, why shouldn't it be possible that he quickly writes to Penny the more or less irrelevant note
as Tim Roberts solution suggests? In Figure 1 one can the three Pigpen circles for his solution.
The red marked letters indicate symbols that are not used in the Dorabella cipher. Of course, he did not use this representation but used the key setence
"LADY PENNY, WRITING IN CODE IS SUCH BUSY WORK", but this is how it
would look like.
"P.S. Now drocp beige weeds set in it – bure idiocy – one endtire bed! Luigi Ccibunud lu'ngly tuned liuto studo two."
or reinterpreted
"P.S. Now droop beige weeds set in it - pure idiocy - one entire bed! Luigi Ccibunud luv'ngly tuned liuto studo two."
as Tim Roberts solution suggests? In Figure 1 one can the three Pigpen circles for his solution.
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| Figure 1. The Pigpen circles for T. Roberts solution. |
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| Figure 2. The cipherbet of Roberts (borrowed from www.ciphermysteries.com) |
Applying this cipherbet to the Liszt-Fragement yields gibberish, which is not surprising, since he seems to (if Roberts is right) have chosen a special version for this Dorabella cipher.
To be honest, the chances that Robert's recovered plaintext is wrong are almost negligible. If a simple monoalphabetic substitution of a ciphertext yields not only English words, but in a meaningful order, then it is hard to believe that it is just a coincidence. There are so many letter dependencies in the text that it has to be correct somehow.
So, albeit i think it is overall the correct solution, it still bothers me that there are some shortcomings in its explanation.
In 1896, the Pall Mall Magazine published a code challenge, said to be "uncrackable", which finally was solved by E. Elgar. It was the Nihilist cipher and he was so proud of his solution that he painted it later on a wooden floor. He explained the solution on a set of nine cards (the Courage card set). On the first of these cards he drew the symbols:
I am not sure if the order is correct. Since this is a full rotation of the 3-cusps symbols concatenated with the two other symbols in upright direction, its hard to believe that this encodes a word. What could have be his intention to draw this symbols on that card set?
To be honest, the chances that Robert's recovered plaintext is wrong are almost negligible. If a simple monoalphabetic substitution of a ciphertext yields not only English words, but in a meaningful order, then it is hard to believe that it is just a coincidence. There are so many letter dependencies in the text that it has to be correct somehow.
So, albeit i think it is overall the correct solution, it still bothers me that there are some shortcomings in its explanation.
In 1896, the Pall Mall Magazine published a code challenge, said to be "uncrackable", which finally was solved by E. Elgar. It was the Nihilist cipher and he was so proud of his solution that he painted it later on a wooden floor. He explained the solution on a set of nine cards (the Courage card set). On the first of these cards he drew the symbols:
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| Figure 3. The symbols from the Courage card set. Order unknown. |
While Tim's 'solution' is tantalizing, the method he uses is too flexible and that flexibility opens up many more possible solutions. It's unlikely that it's correct.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think we stand little to no chance of deciphering the message. It is almost positively not a mono-alphabetic substitution cipher (it completely fails on all the best known decryption algorithms),
and it's highly unlikely that Elgar thought the recipient had the skills to decipher anything more complex than that.
My guess is that the solution is very simple, but requires very specific information that Elgar assumed Dora would remember, or it is just a simple tease (with no solution at all)...but who knows.
It's fascinating how Elgar was able to decipher complex codes like Nihilist and potentially apply similar skills to the Dorabella cipher.
ReplyDelete