[teddyh]

> She also revealed today that there was a fifth level of encryption on the coin which no one had broken yet.

Now, how believable is that?

[sen]

The fifth level was a binary puzzle hidden in the colouration of the writing. Darker/lighter letters were 1's and 0's. The second part of the 5th level was that the other ring of writing had 3 "colours", which were the dots, dashes, and spaces in a morse code string.

The only reason the fifth level was "hidden" was that there wasn't obvious hints/clues pointing to it like the first 4, where each specifically hinted at how to solve the next.

[krisoft]

I completely believe that she said that.

It is mostly believable that there is a fifth level.

It is likely that they haven't received a correct solution at the time of the announcement yet.

Which part are you doubting?

[McDyver]

"And believe it or not, a boy, 14 years old in Tasmania, was the first person in just over an hour to get *all four* layers right."

Cue Maxwell Smart: "would you believe 5 layers?"

[teddyh]

I doubted the fact that there really was a fifth level. It seems like exactly what someone would make up on the spot in an embarrasing situation like this.

[na85]

Why would they be embarrassed? It's a PR piece, not meant to be actually secure against cryptanalysis.

[permo-w]

embarrassing? they seemed delighted

[iamtedd]

That's called spin.

[scrlk]

Reminds me of the Kryptos sculpture installed at CIA HQ - the last passage still hasn't been solved yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos

[killingtime74]

Maybe there is no solution they just trying to mess with us

[jgrahamc]

https://blog.jgc.org/2011/12/back-channel-confirms-that-im-r...