Typo Confounds Kryptos SleuthsAnd the error:
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.
It all comes down to a letter that Sanborn left out of the sculpture. He only recently realized the omission was leading sleuths down a misguided path. His followers, however, aren't feeling any grief about the misdirection.
"Any time we get the sculptor saying anything for sure, it's cause for celebration," says Elonka Dunin, a game developer for Simutronics and co-moderator of a Yahoo group devoted to Kryptos who also maintains a comprehensive website about the sculpture. "We love to get any information out of him that we can."
Sanborn realized only this week that the original decryption was incorrect while doing a letter-by-letter comparison of the plain text and coded text in preparation for a nonfiction book he's producing about the life of the sculpture and the unexpected interest it's garnered.Oops... Posted by DaveH at April 20, 2006 9:20 PM
The mistake involves an "x" that Sanborn intentionally deleted from the end of a line in section two for aesthetic reasons, to keep the sculpture visually balanced. The "x" was supposed to signify a period or section break at the end of a phrase but Sanborn removed it thinking it wouldn't affect the way the puzzle was deciphered. It turns out the "x" made all the difference.