Software Development

(edit: The following articles are what I've found in a two week span. These were the last two weeks of May 2009. At the beginning of May 2009, I didn't even know what a Ceasar shift was. I then went through the US Army's manual on cryptography and brushed up on field ciphers. At the same time, I was reading what I could on the sculputre itself, but no work was being done to decipher it. The last two weeks of May would bring new clues on a daily basis. At the end, I could no longer entertain the notion that I was on the right track since everything was getting really absurd. Here is the result of what I found if anyone cares to completely solve K4.)

PART I

The Russians are coming

One thing to remember about any creative art is that it's rare for something to be done for nothing. This is obvious to anyone who's done manual labour. If you read up on how Sanborn made the sculpture, he talks about how it took several months to cut out the letters with a jigsaw. I don't understand how that is even possible, but I can guarantee, you won't be doing more cutting than you need.

Just think as to what it would take to include something useless. Think about putting useless Morse code on your sculpture. For people who work at programming or use a computer, you can try different things without much loss of time and effort. But when you have anything creative, whether it be a book, story, sculpture or anything else, thinking up of useless things to include doesn't make much sense. The effort you put into it would be wasted. Also, how do you think up of useless thing to put into your work? Seems rather backwards.

So everything at the site serves a purpose. Those that don't serve a practical purpose serve an aesthetic purpose.

I hope everyone understands by now that no one is going to put Morse code there for no reason. Not ONE letter, not one dot or dash is going to be cut out if it's not needed. A mistake that's left in if it's aesthetically pleasing to save from starting over? Sure. But nothing intentional.

Now that we know EVERYTHING is important, let's list the things that stand out.

1. X's in K2.
   
2. LAYERTWO
   
3. K4 is 31 characters wide on its last three rows.
   
4. Tableau has 4 extra columns.
   
5. X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q
   
6. Misspelled words IQLUSION, UNDERGRUUND and DESPARATLY.
   

I could go on, but this is enough.

Let's start with #1. X's. Also consider that the misspelled U in UNDERGRUUND should be an O. X's and O's? Not only that, but K3 is done in a Morse code style transmission, as stated by K2. K2 says that it was gathered and transmitted underground. The landscaping has copper plating that goes underground. The copper plating has Morse code. So making the link, K3 and K4 are symbolically underground. They are buried. Dark. K3 is almost invisible and K4 is completely invisible. More on that later.

Let's stick with the X's and O's. We know that K3 is done in Morse code style. In Morse code, you're supposed to start a message by sending the station ID that you want to contact, the letters DE followed by your own ID.

SLOWLY DE SPARATLY

Or, if we cut it off at the missing E,

SLOWLY DE SPARAT

Does SPARAT remind you of anything?

SPARTA by flipping the last two characters. This is itself a clue for later. See, the clue are stumbling over themselves.

Also in Morse code is that '?' is sent to correct a word. In this case, the last thing sent is not a word, but the letter Q.

X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q ? O (BKR...)

Is it getting clearer? The Q was a mistake, or a misspelling if you will that is beneficial in being there as a clue. Corrected with the O, we get

X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING O

Or, CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING between the X's and O's.

It should be clear that the most famous game of X's and O's is tic tac toe. It's a clear indication of a grid or matrix. But what kind? Nihilist, checkerboard, polybius, playfair, two squares, four squares? What? Lots of options.

Well, on the tableau, we have a 30 letter alphabet in the top row. What kind of grid has 30 characters?

Straddling Checkerboard!

That's a Russian invention.

So we put our Russian thinking caps on. When in Russia, do as the Russian, uh..., do.

How do Russians build straddling checkerboards? In WWII, they had a specific way of building them.

They have more letters in their alphabet, but the principle is the same when converted to English. You pick the most common letters for the top row. Then pick a keyword and write it out horizontally removing any duplicate letters. Then write the remaining letters of the alphabet underneath in alphabetic order. In English, we'd need 28 characters in all, so we add a period and question mark.

In English, we'd have three rows which means two spots on the top row are blank. What 8 letters should be use for the top row?

Remember DYAHR? The letters that are offset? That's a feature of Linotype machines. It's why all typesetting programs have offset letters in their logos. It's also called HOT TYPE. If you see a resemblance to HOT AIR, then you might be starting to see how K3 fits into all this.

Linotype machines had two groups of 6 letters which contained the most used letters.

ETAOIN SHDRLU

We still have a problem. Those are 6 letter groups. Not 8 like we need.

I originally started with SHDRLU because of LAYERTWO. But with what I know now, that may not have been entirely correct. Still, I ended up with a correct matrix.

SHDRLU

What other two characters should we use?

In K3, there is

I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT CORNER.

In the upper left corner of the K3 ciphertext is EN. And both letters happen to be part of the first group. So I decided to give those 8 letters a try.

SHDRLUEN

What about the keyword? KRYPTOS seems as good a keyword as any. So we start with KRYPTOS and write the rest of the alphabet underneath with a period and question mark as well.

K  R  Y  P  T  O  S


A  B  C  D  E  F  G


H  I  J  L  M  N  Q


U  V  W  X  Z  .  ?

Now, we number our 8 letters SHDRLUEN from 0 to 7 in columnar order from left to right. So we scan KAHU then RBIV, etc. and number our 8 letters as we find them.

K  R  Y  P  T  O  S
   2              7

A  B  C  D  E  F  G
         3  5

H  I  J  L  M  N  Q
0        4     6

U  V  W  X  Z  .  ?
1

The remaining letters are numbered from 10 to 29 using the same columnar traversal.

K  R  Y  P  T  O  S
10 2  15 19 21 24 7

A  B  C  D  E  F  G
11 12 16 3  5  25 27

H  I  J  L  M  N  Q
0  13 17 4  22 6  28

U  V  W  X  Z  .  ?
1  14 18 20 23 26 29

Now we extract the letters according to their number. We leave number 8 and 9 as blank for now. Also, each 10 letters go on a different row. That will make three rows in all.

HURDLENS
KABIVYCJWP
XTMZOF.GQ?

If that doesn't impress you, I don't know what will. The last part to finishing the straddling checkerboard is to figure out what spots to leave blank in the top row. We'll talk about that in part II.

For now, note the 'X' and 'Q?' Also note HURD LENS. It's a kind of contact lens. TMZ OF could also be considered a clue (TMZ is found on the last line of K4's ciphertext). See VYC. I had long suspected it had something to do with a VIC cipher. But that's for a much later section.