A cryptic riddle within a riddle
At the entrance to CIA headquarters in New York, is a sculpture that is as mysterious as it is beautifully designed.
The sculpture resembles the pages of a book, and hidden in the 1,735 copper letters are 4 encoded passages that are important to the history of cryptography. Kryptos contains a riddle within a riddle, which will be solvable only after the four encrypted passages have been deciphered.
The encrypted messages were designed to challenge agency employees as well as cryptographers worldwide. In 1998, a CIA physicist cracked the code for 3 of the 4 sections using only pencil and paper. Then a year later a scientist in California did the same using a computer. The artist, James Sanborn and his wife are the only 2 people in the world who know the contents of the remaining 97-character message.
The first message says…
BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION
Iqlusion was an intentional misspelling of illusion by the creator, Jim Sanborn, that was intended to throw people off.
The second message says…
IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE ? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS GATHERED AND TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS ? THEY SHOULD ITS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION ? ONLY WW THIS WAS HIS LAST MESSAGE X THIRTY EIGHT DEGREES FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES SIX POINT FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY SEVEN DEGREES EIGHT MINUTES FORTY FOUR SECONDS WEST X LAYER TWO
The coordinates mentioned in the plaintext, 38°57′6.5″N 77°8′44″W, have been interpreted using a modern Geodetic datum as indicating a point that is approximately 174 feet (53 meters) southeast of the sculpture.
The third message says…
SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q ?
This is a paraphrased quotation from Howard Carter's account of the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun on November 26, 1922, as described in his 1923 book The Tomb of Tutankhamun. The question with which it ends is asked by Lord Carnarvon, to which Carter in the book replied, "wonderful things". Field notes from the expedition, however, show his reply as, "Yes, it is wonderful".
Photo courtesy of: Jim Sanborn, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kryptos\_sculptor.jpg
https://www.cia.gov/legacy/headquarters/kryptos-sculpture/