Another Point of Singularity

Washington is a monumental kinda town. Well, in the statue sense of the phrase. Seems like every nook and cranny of the 50 mile Federal enclave has some statue or memorial or special interest group honored in granite, steel and concrete for all time. Here's a monument that most people don't get to see:



KRYPTOS, the work of sculptor Jim Sanborn, is on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency. Shaped like a flowing Bezier curve, the statue is covered on all sides with cyphertext. The Sanborn cyphertext is remarkably hard to penetrate; only portions of it have been solved and there's a big chunk that has eluded amateur cypher analysts since it was installed in 1999. Now, it turns out, the sculptor made a small typo, which has rendered that portion of the cypher unsolvable. D'OH!!!

For more than a decade, amateur and professional cryptographers have been trying to decipher an encrypted sculpture that sits on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Three-fourths of the sculpture has already been solved.

But now Jim Sanborn, the artist who created the Kryptos sculpture, says he made a mistake. A previously solved part of the puzzle that sleuths assumed was correct for years isn't. The new information, including what the mistaken text really says, is creating a buzz among enthusiasts who've been obsessed over the sculpture for years.

Accredidation: WIRED NEWS

I am something of a cyphertext enthusiast, myself. I have a charcoal rubbing of the front top right portion of KRYPTOS which I'm considering getting framed (I like this piece quite a bit).

What I didn't know was how much of a cult following the sculpture has (besides myself, I mean). Here's some online information for the amateur crypto geeks out there:

TRANSCRIPT of KRYPTOS (formatted HTML)

CIA Analyst Cracks sections 1-3

NPR interview with Sanborn

Elonka Dunin's radio broadcast (underground) focusing on Kryptos