NumberWorld

In this post I want to revisit an observation from years ago that seems to address K4 directly. It begins with a simple experiment: split the K4 ciphertext at every W . Once you do that, an unexpected frequency pattern emerges. A related discussion can be found in [1] For a quick introduction, I put together a short video that explains the basic idea behind this “W-splitting” approach. Video: Overview of the W-Splitting phenomenon

A hidden word can be extracted from the Kryptos K2 cipher — possibly inserted intentionally by Jim Sanborn. Could this reveal a clue about Kryptos K4, or is it simply a coincidence? In Part 6-b, i want to show another finding from years ago, which probably many people didnt know. It is about K2. Below you see on the left the ciphertext (I) as it can be found on the Kryptos statue. Decoding it with "ABSCISSA", yields the plaintext (I) on the right.

During the Christmas period, I spent many hours reading news articles and forum discussions about Kryptos. I reread some of the old topics on the Yahoo Kryptos Group. It is always surprising to see the findings from many years ago that have somehow been forgotten. I don't mean they're forgotten, just not on the current radar. Especially three topics raised my attention: The Pre-K, i.e. Mini Kryptos Sculpture The reveal of the word ASTATOS in K2 The W-splitting phenomenon In this post, I want to show how these topics might be connected. This post covers the first of the three points, Parts 6-b and Part 6-c follow the next days.

A few days ago Jim Sanborn made an announcement - he wrote an open letter to the community, which is shown below and be accessed at [2]: Nov 12, 2025 Another open letter to the kryptos community: K4 has not been solved or decrypted. The scrambled plain text was found, but without the coding method or key, this is a very important distinction. The method of decryption also known as the Key is in this auction and is still very much a secret. As is the discovered plain text which is still unpublished, In fact several people have seen the K4 plain text over the years but have chosen to not release it for the greater good and have long since forgotten what it says. Todays K4 clues :

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...

One of the most surprising facts about Kryptos is that no one has yet discovered the expected way to find the keywords for K1 and K2. And perhaps this missing fact is the key to why we are stuck with K4. I don't think Sanborn wanted us to bruteforce the solutions (as we did), but somehow left a clue that we haven't seen yet. Most people believe, that the morse code messages around Kryptos should somehow encode at least the first codeword for K1 (= Palimpsest). That's why the Morse code message are often called K0. The Morse code messages are part of two pieces of granite with contained copper plates. I found two very interesting drawings of these two installations by Monet Friedrich on [1]:

EASTNORTHEAST - This is not exactly the hint Jim Sanborn (JS) gave for K4 on the 29th of January this year. He only gave NORTHEAST - which refers to the positions 26-34 of K4's plaintext.  Beside BERLIN and CLOCK it is the third revealed plaintext word of K4. However, also this hint does not seem to help much.  However, it just so happened, that a member in the yahoo kryptos group had a conversation with Jim Sanborn due to a submitted solution. Sandborn's answer to the question contained again the last clue which surprisingly was EASTNORTHEAST at position 22-34. Jim Sanborns compass rose at CIA There is disagreement if Jim revealed this on purpose or he did it accidentially, but the new extended clue seem to be serious and valid.Interestingly, EASTNORTHEAST is exactly the direction which is illustrated on the compass rose on one of the stones around kryptos, also created by Jim Sanborn. Actually, i dont really kn...

This post is about is more or less a collection of several approaches and facts that has been said as well as some speculations. B-ary integer representation According to [1] during a Question and Answer round, Jim Sanborn was asked again about the hint BERLIN. The question was if N decodes to B, Y decodes to E, etc, etc. and Jim confirmed it does. Emphatically . It is written, that Jim Sanborn rattled through the entire crib: \begin{align}   \texttt{N} &\stackrel{\text{decode}}{\rightarrow} \texttt{B} \\   \texttt{Y} &\stackrel{\text{decode}}{\rightarrow}  \texttt{E} \\   \texttt{P} &\stackrel{\text{decode}}{\rightarrow}  \texttt{R} \\   \texttt{V} &\stackrel{\text{decode}}{\rightarrow}  \texttt{L} \\   \texttt{T} &\stackrel{\text{decode}}{\rightarrow}  \texttt{I} \\   \texttt{T} &\stackrel{\text{decode}}{\rightarrow}  \texttt{N} \end{align} When the same q...

This is Part 2 about Kryptos and the first post can be found here . In this post i will focus more on abnormalities and solutions attempts. Kryptos' Abnormalities Drawn by author. One noticeable fact is, that the letters KRYPTOS somehow are involved in the decryption process of all previous ciphers. In K1 and K2 they were directly used as one of the keywords in the Vigenère-Variant Quagmire3. For K3 there are several ways to transpose the ciphertext in order to reveal the plaintext, but one of them has to do with ordering/reordering the letters of KRYPTOS alphabetically. So, it seems plausible, that also in K4 these letters play a role in one or the other way. A further hint towards this is, that the letters of KRYPTOS all appear on the right side or in direct neighborhood on the left side, as marked below: 25| OB KR 26| UOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFLRVQQPRNGKS SO 27| T WTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBN YP 28| VTTMZF...

Introduction. Since I think that KRYPTOS does not need any introduction, I will only give you a brief description of one of the most famous and only partially solved ciphers known today: KRYPTOS - Von Jim Sanborn - Jim Sanborn, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8253447 KRYPTOS was constructed in Nov. 1990 on the ground of the CIA Headquarter in Langley, Virginia by Jim Sanborn It contains 4 ciphers (K1,K2,K3,K4) on its left side and some kind of Vigenère-Table on its right side K1, K2 and K3 were solved by James Gillogly in 1999. Afterwards, the CIA and later the NSA claimed that they had a solution to the first three ciphers at an earlier point in time Ed Scheidt, a cryptoanalyst and former director of the CIA, gave Sanborn the input of possible cryptographic techniques to use K1 is a variant of the Vigenère-Cipher (Quagmire 3) with the codewords KRYPTOS and PALIMPSES...