| I see people upset about the solution being found "Through other means", but this is technically still in the spirit of the puzzle. 1. That is technically normal espionage practices, the CIA wouldn't be the CIA if they were only reliant on cryptography... (they'd be the NSA) 2. The solution to this puzzle would bring closure to at this point generations of curious people. 3. On the more technical side, it's been discussed that the potential method for decrypting K4 is more or less insolvable through normal patterns because Jim not being a cryptographer decided to use a multi stage encryption method which relies on knowing both (or multiple) keys with accuracy. The risk here with him not being a cryptographer is not realizing the how hard/impossible he might have made it. 4. I also like to believe as we culturally move through time the potential Keywords or transposition shift keys may dissolve away. For all we know he may have chosen a word that was colloquial to the 80's, CIA, Espionage...ect that has just dissolved with time. I want to see the solution, I want to reiterate Jim was not a cryptographer and may have gone buck wild with his encryption. Just throwing out some solution banter.
I believe one layer of K4 is null cipher, but I think its screwed by a transposition of which I think the key is based off K0, or something to do with the lat-long coordinates. Also when he says Berlin clock I think he means Kalendarplatz, this would make more sense as he is a sculpture artist who works with forces of nature. My only other call out is he may have tied Kryptos into the north east area of the CIA, potentially linking it to the memorial gardens or the wall of the fallen officers. |
And as someone else said, this is exactly the sort of solution the CIA would come up with. So it should be considered in bounds.