A Break for Code Breakers on a C.I.A. Mystery

[DoYouEverWonder]

?OBKR/UOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFLRVQQPRNGKSSO/TWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBNYP/VTTMZFPKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEKCAR

April 22, 2006

For nearly 16 years, puzzle enthusiasts have labored to decipher an 865-character coded message stenciled into a sculpture on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Va. This week, the sculptor gave them an unsettling but hopeful surprise: part of the message they thought they had deciphered years ago actually says something else.

The sculpture, titled "Kryptos," the Greek word for "hidden," includes an undulating sheet of copper with a message devised by the sculptor, Jim Sanborn, and Edward M. Scheidt, a retired chairman of the C.I.A.'s cryptographic center.

The message is broken into four sections, and in 1999, a computer programmer named Jim Gillogly announced he had figured out the first three, which include poetic ramblings by the sculptor and an account of the opening of King Tut's tomb. The C.I.A. then announced that one of its physicists, David Stein, had also deciphered the first three sections a year earlier.

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Sanborn left a phone message for Elonka Dunin, a computer game developer who also runs an e-mail list for enthusiasts trying to solve the "Kryptos" puzzle. For the first time, Mr. Sanborn had done a line-by-line analysis of his text with what Mr. Gillogly and Mr. Stein had offered as the solution and discovered that part of the solved text was incorrect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/us/22puzzle.html

[acmavm]

1. Excuse my ignorance but what are the first three segments? And I'm

taking this to mean that they've been decoded. Am I wrong?

[951-Riverside]

2. I don't want to post it here to spoil it for anyone else but

You can find the first 3 solutions here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. Here's a pic of it

[anotherdrew]

8. has anyone looked under that rock in the pic? bet it's not been moved n/t

[Blue_Tires]

3. 'Remember to drink your Ovaltine!'

[BrotherBuzz]

7. A crummy commercial?

Son of a bitch!

You'll shoot your eye out, kid.

[lovuian]

5. I've met Elonka Dunin and she said the text was probably

incorrect... they have been trying to decipher this code for years....

Great News...

[alfredo]

6. The curator of the National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade

MG John Morrison, is seriously ill. He's doing better now, but he was in bad shape. He collapsed in his home and was found two days later. No word on what took him down.

I'm an old morse intercept specialist.

http://www.nsa.gov/museum/index.cfm