this week. It’s meant to provide an automated way for people to contact Sanborn with their proposed solutions to the puzzle. The site consists of a single page with an online form for solvers to submit the first 10 characters of their proposed solution to the puzzle.

Sanborn created the cypher sculpture in 1990 for CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and plans to release a new clue to help puzzle detectives solve the last 97 characters of his masterpiece. The new clue is to be revealed to mark the 20th anniversary of the sculpture, which was dedicated Nov. 3, 1990.

It will be the first clue Sanborn has revealed in four years, after he corrected a typo in his sculpture in 2006 to keep crypto detectives from being derailed in their search for solutions.

Sanborn wouldn’t disclose the clue to Threat Level but said only cryptically that it will “globalize” the sculpture. Asked if this meant it would take the sculpture off the CIA grounds and out of the United States, he conceded it would.

“I personally think it’s a significant clue,” he said. “I’m throwing it out there. It just makes that many fewer characters people have to figure out.”

The 12-foot-high, verdigrised copper, granite and wood sculpture is inscribed with four encrypted messages, three of which have been solved. The sculpture’s theme is intelligence gathering (Kryptos is Greek for “hidden”). Three of the four have already been cracked, but the last one — consisting of just 97 characters — has confounded amateur and professional cryptographers for 20 years.

Sanborn has been contacted over the years by numerous people who believed they’d solved the puzzle. Many of the solutions they proposed were wildly off-base. He told Threat Level that with the launch of his new site, anyone who thinks they’ve solved the last section will have to submit what they believe are the first 10 characters of the final 97 before he will respond.

Photo of Kryptos courtesy of CIA

Authors: Kim Zetter

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