In a previous post, an explanation was given for how K1 of Kryptos was solved. Kryptos is an encrypted sculpture located in the CIA courtyard in Langley, VA. This artistic feature, created by Jim Sanborn, has eluded all those who have tried to discover it’s full meaning since November 1990.
The main element of Sanborn’s artistic landscape is the S shaped copper plate flowing out of a piece of petrified wood. The engraved plate is believed broken up into four parts. Each part is to be decoded separately, and then used to realize an overall message or philosophy for the complete Krptos layout. Parts 1 thru 3, or K1, K2, and K3 have yielded, at least in part, their messages. The following is how K2 was solved.
K2’s message was deciphered in much the same way as K1. Sanborn used a keyed vigenere cipher system, also known as Quagmire III, to encode the mysterious text.
The keywords used were Kryptos and Abscissa.
An Abscissa is the x-coordinate, the distance from a point to the vertical or y-axis measured parallel to the horizontal or x-axis. (image below)
The encrypted text was 12 lines and 372 letters long. (but should have been 373)
VFPJUDEEHZWETZYVGWHKKQETGFQJNCE
GGWHKK?DQMCPFQZDQMMIAGPFXHQRLG
TIMVMZJANQLVKQEDAGDVFRPJUNGEUNA
QZGZLECGYUXUEENJTBJLBQCRTBJDFHRR
YIZETKZEMVDUFKSJHKFWHKUWQLSZFTI
HHDDDUVH?DWKBFUFPWNTDFIYCUQZERE
EVLDKFEZMOQQJLTTUGSYQPFEUNLAVIDX
FLGGTEZ?FKZBSFDQVGOGIPUFXHHDRKF
FHQNTGPUAECNUVPDJMQCLQUMUNEDFQ
ELZZVRRGKFFVOEEXBDMVPNFQXEZLGRE
DNQFMPNZGLFLPMRJQYALMGNUVPDXVKP
DQUMEBEDMHDAFMJGZNUPLGESWJLLAETG
Using the keywords, as what was done in K1, the following is decoded:
IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE ? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS GATHERED AND TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS ? THEY SHOULD ITS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION ? ONLY WW THIS WAS HIS LAST MESSAGE X THIRTY EIGHT DEGREES FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES SIX POINT FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY SEVEN DEGREES EIGHT MINUTES FORTY FOUR SECONDS WEST X LAYER TWO
If you notice on the sculpture itself, the last S in the above encrypted text is not shown. It was accidentally omitted, and for years, people thought the last part decoded to ID BY ROWS (because it did). The missing S from the sculpture actually decoded to something sensible instead of gibberish. However, Sanborn alerted those working on his puzzle, this was a mistake. An S should appear and decode to an X after WEST. Then LAYER TWO.
Another misspelling, like one found in K1, is also found in K2. This is not a mistake, but intentional by Sanborn. UNDERGRUUND. An R in the fourth row of K2 is where the mistake is found. Again, it is known Sanborn said it is not so much the letter, but the position which is important.
Which, if the Kryptos grid is seen like a coordinate graph, maybe it is the Abscissa? In which case it would be 24. It’s interesting to take note that the Missing S is also in position 24, the Abscissa, of that line when looking at is a graph.
The coordinates in the decoded message: 38-57- 6.5 N and 77-8-44 W lead to a location about 150 SW of the sculpture. What might be buried here? If anything physically?
K3 was solved a bit differently than K1 and K2. Instead of a complex substitution cipher, it was encoded by a Transposition Cipher. (more soon).
.
,