F.A.Q.

Q: Where do the latitude/longitude coordinates point to? About 100' southeast of the sculpture. See Elonka's aerial view page or Xenon's plot page for more. Q: Has anyone thought of . . . ? There are a lot of speculative theories floating around. The following list includes a few of them. Note: If you've got an idea on solving Kryptos and see your idea listed here, that doesn't necessarily mean we've thought of the exact same technique (or that we did it correctly), so feel free to verify! - Morse Code - Palindromes - Placement of rocks and other elements in the courtyard - Shadows & sundials - Egyptian references - Magnetism - The Philadelphia Experiment - Folding one half of the sculpture on top of the other - Connecting the two halves into a Jefferson Cypher Cylinder - Using the ciphertext side as a book code - Trying to decrypt part 4 by typing it into a WWII Enigma machine - Holding a candle up to part of the sculpture and observing light rays - Combining the methods of 1-3 to solve part 4 - Kryptos looks like a flag, an S, or printer paper Q: Where can I learn about cryptography? Check this link for a list of books and websites: Recommended Reading Q: If I have an idea or information about Kryptos, how can I share it? It depends if you have a quick brainstorming idea, or a complex concept you want to present. If the latter, the best thing to do is to post it on a webpage and then send the link along to the Kryptos Group. If the former, we recommend that you join one or both of the Kryptos brainstorming lists, and post your idea there. You may wish to join first, and then review the archives to see if the idea has already been presented. But if you're not sure, go ahead and bring up your idea! We'd rather hear the same idea five times, than to not hear a good idea because someone's afraid they're not being original! Q: Where has Kryptos been discussed on the web in the past? In terms of internet discussion groups, over the years, different lists have popped up, thrived, and then faded again. Many of the older Kryptos discussions can be found on the sci.crypt mailing list, which seemed to be one of the primary locations for Kryptos discussions through 2003. There was also an active discussion for awhile in 1999 on an ABC message board, but that seems to have been deleted. Q: Where are the current active Kryptos discussion groups? As of this writing in 2005, there are two extremely active Kryptos discussions on yahoogroups. One, founded in May 2003, is called simply "Kryptos" and is the primary discussion venue for ideas and discoveries about the sculpture. It is a moderated list where messages must be approved and members are expected to introduce themselves. Another list founded in December 2003 is called "kryptos_sculpture" and is more of a "pure brainstorming" list, where anything goes, and all ideas are welcome. Many people monitor both lists. If you're not sure which list to post on, the rule of thumb is this: If you have some cryptographic background and would like to present some statistics or a solid analysis or observation of Kryptos, you should definitely post it to the Kryptos list. Also, if you've never posted to either of the lists but just have one idea to present, you should probably post it to the main list. If you just want to toss out random ideas on a daily or hourly basis though, or a discussion starts which isn't directly related to Kryptos but still may be of interest to some of the group members, then the kryptos_sculpture list may be more appropriate. There's still a great deal of overlap and grey area between the two lists though: Occasional brainstorming ideas are fine to post to the kryptos list, and some solid analysis occasionally shows up on kryptos_sculpture. The important thing, is to get your ideas out there to other people, whichever list you choose. Q: How do I join the discussion groups? Send an email to one or both of the following addresses: kryptos-subscribe@yahoogroups.com kryptos_sculpture-subscribe@yahoogroups.co