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This is a story about a puzzle called Kryptos and one woman who's spent almost two decades trying to solve it. In the heart of the CIA headquarters lies a mystery.
OK,
probably more than one mystery, but, this one is weird because it's meant to be
solved.
It's a
sculpture containing an encoded message that's a challenge to the CIA employees but,
for 30 years, no one has been able to figure out what it says.
If anyone's
got a shot, it's Elonka Dunin. I mean, just listen to her.
- When my
friends and family ask me what I want for Christmas,
I tell them to get several puzzles, mix all the pieces together, and then, just give me a bag of pieces. I enjoy seeing order come out of chaos.
When
Elonka's not solving jigsaw puzzles, she's cracking codes and she's good at it.
The Da
Vinci Code's author even named a character after her, Nola Kaye.
I mean,
it's an anagram, but, you know, that's the kind of thing puzzle people do.
One day,
Elonka ran into a code that finally stumped her.- I first heard about Kryptos in late 2000. It is about 12 feet tall and 20 feet long.
It has
thousands of characters carved into it. Kryptos has four codes in it.
Three of
the four have been solved. The fourth has not been solved and it is considered
to be one
of the most famous unsolved codes of the world.
Here we
are going on 30 years, and it still hasn't been cracked.
Elonka
and cryptanalysts around the world have tried every technique in the book, polyalphabetic
substitution, transposition, Playfair, binary, and Morse, but, the fourth code is only
97 characters long,
it
doesn't give an inch.
It just
sits there, right in front of us, unsolved.
- So, it
raises the question of why.
Why is it
that this artist, Jim Sanborn, who had never created a code before in his
entire life,
how could
he have designed something that has stumped the entire code-breaking world?
Welcome
to the island of Jim Sanborn. He is the artist who made Kryptos,
and he's
the only person on Earth who knows the solution.
- The
code itself is in a safe deposit box that's pretty much where it stays.
In the late 1980s, the CIA required that they have a sculpture. I was ultimately selected to do the work on the exterior of the building. So, I chose to do a piece using encoded text.
Through
this copper screen, I cut with jigsaws, by hand, almost 2,000 letters, and
people have been contacting me continuously, daily, for 30 years about it.] We
have sushi, we have drinks, we have chips.
There is
actually a Kryptos group, that meets every year or so, to do everything humanly
possible
to get me
to give them a clue about Kryptos.
Our Kryptos community is made up of people from all around the world. We have thousands of people that are interested in Kryptos and either cracking it or helping to see it cracked.
Some of
them are professional code breakers, some of them are students,
and often
someone will just come in and toss out an idea and then, there will be some
brainstorming.
The
topography has changed.
Has
anything changed in terms of the solutions of Kryptos because of the changes?
- That's a, it's a trap question. - Good (laugh).
Often
it's just a case of everyone just wants to listen to every single thing that
Jim might say about Kryptos because there's that hope that he will drop that
clue, that little hint that will help.
So, if
one invested a lot of time in the environment around Kryptos that would be kind
of silly.
I still
have to be very vigilant and extremely poker-faced when everybody wants to know
what it says,
but, I've
gotten after 30 years, fairly good at making it so that I don't flinch or offer
them a tell.
And so
far, so good.
It's been
30 years since Kryptos was unveiled at the CIA
and still, people are working to crack that forth code, every single day.
I think
every artwork strives to hold your attention for as long as possible, but, if
it's an artwork that contains something that keeps your attention for even 10
minutes, much less 30 years,
I get a
great sense of satisfaction from that.
It's
become part of a many, many people's lives, and I think that's the most important
part.
People
have asked me if I want to be the one that solves Kryptos, and it doesn't have
to be me.
I want to
see it solved, and if I can help by sharing as much information as I know,
that's as
good to me as having actually cracked the code.
If I had
to place a bet, Kryptos, yes, Kryptos will be solved.
I
couldn't tell you when, but, it's a real code; it's a real cipher; it's
solvable.
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