{"id":16436,"date":"2014-12-02T11:21:06","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T11:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zatista.com\/blog\/?p=16436"},"modified":"2016-07-19T20:44:27","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T20:44:27","slug":"breaking-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zatista.ie\/blog\/2014\/12\/breaking-code\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking The Code"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kryptos, a sculpture at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., in 2010. The last of four messages embedded in Kryptos has baffled code breakers since the work went up in 1990. The sculptor, Jim Sanborn, gave a six-letter clue (\u201cBerlin\u201d) in 2010, but it did not lead to a solution. So he has offered another hint, this one five letters (\u201cClock\u201d). \u201cI figured maybe I should be a little more specific,\u201d he said. Photo: Drew Angerer for The New York Times<\/p><\/div>\n

From Artnet<\/a> News: An enigmatic Kryptos sits\u00a0in front of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and, after 24 years, the work, unveiled\u00a0on\u00a0November 3, 1990, has yet to be decoded.\u00a0The sculptor who created it, Jim Sanborn<\/a>, has decided to issue the latest clue to its\u00a0meaning, reports the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Standing at 12-feet-tall and made up of copper, granite, and wood, the work has created a type of cult following among, for example, the\u00a0tech nerds who read\u00a0Wired<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Kryptos by Jim Sanborn<\/p><\/div>\n

By 1999, nine years after the work went up, fans had deciphered three of the sculpture’s four messages. The final passage\u201497 characters long\u2014has proved resilient to thousands of code-breakers.<\/p>\n

By 2010, Sanborn had grown impatient with the progress of his fans and decided to release a clue to help solve the puzzle\u2014the 64th through 69th characters spelled “Berlin.” Although the divulging of the clue led to a “tsunami” of guesses, fans turned up empty-handed.<\/p>\n

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Kryptos by Jim Sanborn<\/p><\/div>\n

So to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the artist said he thought it was worth returning to the topic. The clue he gave to the 70th and 74th position was “clock.”<\/p>\n

“Reading” the letters from 64 to 74, therefore, produces the phrase\u00a0\u201cBerlin clock.”<\/p>\n

What could “Berlin Clock” refer to? When asked if it was referencing a famous timepiece known as the “Berlin Clock,” the artist simply stated, “There are several really interesting clocks in Berlin.”<\/p>\n

To devise the code,\u00a0Sanborn\u00a0worked with a retired chairman of the CIA’s cryptographic center, Edward M. Scheidt. When asked whether Scheidt\u00a0expected people would still be banging their heads trying to decode the Kryptos, he replied, “No, not really” with a chuckle. “But the technique that I used obviously worked.”<\/p>\n

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