The Artist Behind the CIA’s Famous “Kryptos” Puzzle Is Ready to Reveal the Solution

For 35 years, amateur sleuths and cryptographers have been playing a game with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They’ve attempted to decipher the four messages hidden in a sculpture dubbed “Kryptos.”

Three have been solved; the fourth has remained elusive, but soon anyone will be eligible to have the answer delivered via armored truck to their front door. The catch? It could cost them upwards of $500,000.

Kryptos, Explained
Solution for Sale

Kryptos, Explained

Kryptos began as something of a publicity stunt. According to The Washington Post, in the 1980s the CIA was looking to move away from its image as a monolithic and clandestine agency hoarding secrets (even though it is indeed a monolithic and clandestine agency hoarding secrets). They hired sculptor Jim Sanborn to craft an art installation for a courtyard located at their Langley, Virginia, headquarters. Working with cryptographer Ed Scheidt, Sanborn created a copper monument to problem-solving—a 1735-character wall resembling a piece of paper exiting a printer and containing four puzzles buried in the alphabet.

Kryptos became a beacon for amateur cryptographers looking to test their skills against a CIA-sanctioned mystery. The first three puzzles, known as K1, K2, and K3, were initially thought to have been cracked by a CIA physicist in 1998 using pen and paper, though documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) later demonstrated that employees there solved them as early as 1993. Often dissolving into gibberish, they read:

Code	Message
K1	Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion
K2	It was totally invisible hows that possible? They used the Earths magnetic field X The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund [sic] to an unknown location X Does Langley know about this? They should its buried out there somewhere X who knows the exact location? only WW this was his last message X Thirty eight degrees fifty seven minutes six point five seconds north seventy seven degrees eight minutes forty four seconds west X layer two
K3	Slowly desparatly [sic] slowly the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway was removed with trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner and then widening the hole a little I inserted the candle and peered in the hot air escaping from the chamber caused the flame to flicker but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist X can you see anything Q?
K4	Unknown

Illusion was purposely misspelled as iqlusion to make the problem a little more difficult; WW refers to onetime CIA head William Webster; the third is a paraphrased quote from Howard Carter, the archaeologist who found King Tut’s tomb in 1922.

The 97-character K4, however, has yet to be cracked despite Sanborn periodically offering clues. Now Sanborn has taken the drastic step of offering the solution to the highest bidder.

Solution for Sale

Sanborn anticipated the cryptography community being able to solve Kryptos in a few years. It’s now been 35, with no end in sight. Speaking with the Post, Sanborn, now 79, has said that the resilience of Kryptos against cracking has become somewhat of a burden. He claims people have shown up at his home looking for answers and that there have been death threats. Solution-seekers bombard him with thousands of messages and have taken to using ChatGPT to try and decipher the mystery. For some, he said, the obsession has resulted in divorce.

He first floated the idea of a public auction in 2020, speculating it might go up upon his death. But he’s now opted to do it in his lifetime. The solution will be provided by RR Auction, an intermediary for people looking to buy and sell historical objects and a variety of collectibles. The sale, to be held November 20, will include the original handwritten code documents, which RR Auction promises to deliver via armored vehicle to the winning bidder, as well as a 12-inch-by-24-inch scale model of the sculpture. They estimate that the solution will sell for between $300,000 and $500,000.

Aerial view of a government building, CIA headquarters, Virginia, USA — CIA headquarters | Glowimages/GettyImages

In a way, RR Auction is also selling a kind of burden. The winning bidder will need to decide whether to keep K4 a secret and act as its keeper or release it publicly to quell what Sanborn has come to believe is an “addiction” among the Kryptos community.

Though even that may not satisfy obsessives. Though RR Auction and even the CIA itself refers to K4 as the “final” message, in his Post interview Sanborn makes a vague reference to “K5,” as though there might be one, as-yet-undiscovered problem to solve—one which might incorporate other elements of the art, including the petrified wood supporting the copper panels and a nearby slab of granite.

“They will be able to read what I wrote,” Sanborn once said, according to the CIA, “but what I wrote is a mystery itself.”

The Artist Behind the CIA’s Famous “Kryptos” Puzzle Is Ready to Reveal the Solution—But There’s a Catch

Kryptos, Explained

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Solution for Sale