Episode 99 - Kryptos

Airdate: 2005-06-08
Length:1:31:48
Size:15.69 MB

Hosts:StankDawg & Elonka

Fun 90-minute episode this week. Main topics: E-3, Hero's Journey, Privacy, Identity Theft, and Kryptos.

Binary Revolution - Episode #99

] Efforts at finding a solution have grown increasingly
] elaborate. Elonka Dunin, an executive at St. Louis
] computer-game company Simutronics, has hunted down other
] encoded sculptures by Mr. Sanborn in search of recurring
] themes.

Wall Street Journal: CIA sculpture 'kryptos' draws mystery lovers

] karena katanya terdiri dari 3 huruf,.. maka jawaban yang
] tepat mungkin a kryptos sculpture..
]
] hehehe.. pantesan mata lu pusing nin,.. gue aja begitu
] ngeliat jawaban loe kryptos sculpture.. gue jadi males
] sendiri..
]
] pokoknya kalo ada yang mau tahu kryptos sculpture itu
] kayak gimana buka aja contohnya di
] http://elonka.com/kryptos/transcript.html
]
] parah dah.. pokoknya kalo emang gak ada waktu luang
] jangan coba2 dahg..

Heh. I was reading my weblogs, and followed a link to this site. I could tell they were linking to me, but couldn't understand the language! For a minute I wondered if it was a Star Wars fansite and they were all speaking in Ewok or something, but I finally figured out that it's a message board in Indonesian, that got hooked on the puzzles in The Da Vinci Code.

Wild. :)

Kryptos and Indonesia

One question I often get asked in interviews, is, "*Why* are people so interested in solving codes?". I can of course talk for awhile about the importance of codes in times of war, but there's also another more philosophical reason.

In one of the posts on a Kryptos brainstorming list, I saw this comment by one of the longtime Kryptos researchers, David Allen Wilson, and it struck a chord with me, so I am re-printing it here:

***
Something that I've learned since I've started working on Kryptos is not to believe that we have to always be on the right track, or to believe that there -must- be a solution to part IV. Yes, I am working on part IV; not because there -has- to be a solution, but to learn. If we find the solution, great. If we don't, oh well.
***

Well put!

Elonka :)

] In Sherlock Holmes' story "The Adventure of the Dancing
] Men", a man reports that his wife, Elsie, became upset
] when she received several notes with figures of dancing
] men on them. Holmes went about deciphering the code.

Someone sent me a pic of a T-shirt from a convention, that used this code. It was a fun little brain stretch.

If anyone else wants to take a look: http://www.livejournal.com/users/tapestry01/303595.html

Elonka

Dancing Man Code

] circa 1200
]
] A Christian monk handwrites prayers in Greek over the
] Archimedes text, turning the old mathematical text into a
] new prayer book. The book is now a palimpsest, a
] manuscript with a layer of text written over an earlier
] scraped- or washed-off text (see What is a Palimpsest?).

This is an interesting link that was sent to my Kryptos brainstorming group. We've long been curious why "Palimpsest" was one of the keywords for solving one of the Kryptos sections, and whether it might give a clue for solving part 4. This information about Archimedes is intriguing. See the link, which includes some animations showing how one text was erased, the page was then turned 90 degrees, and another text written on top. The "90 degree twist" idea would completely change the part 4 ciphertext if we were to read things vertically. Hmmm...

The Archimedes Palimpsest

noteworthy wrote:
] Elonka wrote:
] ] Note: I've been curious as to what other books beat DVC's
] ] sales records.
]
] Nothing definitive on that point, but I did find a few data
] points:
] This page claims that "The Valley of the Dolls" is the
] bestselling fiction of all time. (This is affirmed by other
] sources, as well.)

I went poking around some other places, too.

According to guinnessworldrecords.com:

Best-selling non-fiction book is the Bible, with an estimated 2.5 billion copies sold since 1815. It has been translated into 2,233 languages and dialects.

Mao's "Little Red Book" was sold or given away to around 900 million people.

The "Guinness World Records" book itself claims the title of biggest selling *copyrighted* book as of 2003: 100 million copies, in 37 languages

Best-selling diary: Anne Frank's, with 25 million copies

Best-selling author of fortune-telling books: Ms. Kazuko Hosoki of Japan, with 34 million copies sold of her series of 81 books on fortune telling (Ms. Hosoki is also one of the judges on the show "Iron Chef").

Best-selling fiction writer: Agatha Christie. Approximately 2 billion copies of her 78 crime novels have been sold, in 44 languages. Royalty earnings are about $3.7 million/year.

Highest one-year sales for a book series: 23 million books in one year, for the Harry Potter series. The fourth book sold 5.1 million copies in two days.

And some other interesting factoids:

Biggest-selling album: Michael Jackson's "Thriller", with 52 million copies.

Best-selling solo country album: Shania Twain's "Come On Over" - 18 million copies

Best-selling classical album: Jose Carreras' "In Concert", with 10.5 worldwide copies

Best-selling latin singers:
 male: Julio Iglesias, 200 million albums
 female: Gloria Estefan, 35 million albums

Best-selling car: 24.9 million Toyota Corollas, as of 2000.

Best-selling video game: "Super Mario Brothers", 40+ million copies. The entire series has sold 152 million copies.

Note: For those who are curious how that last one stacks up to "Grand Theft Auto", according to CNN, as of October 2004:
 - GTA 3: 5.4 million copies in the U.S., 11 million worldwide
 - GTA Vice City: 6.1 million copies in the U.S., 13 million worldwide
 - GTA San Andreas: 5.1 million in the U.S. (as of 1/2005)

Bestsellers around the world (RE: Vatican goes on offensive against 'Da Vinci Code')

] ROME After months of turning the other cheek, Vatican
] officials are lashing out against "The Da Vinci Code,"
] saying Christians should not buy or even read the
] best-selling thriller.

I'd been curious as to why traffic to my Kryptos website had doubled over the last couple days, but this is probably why. Evidently a Catholic Cardinal condemned the book, "The Da Vinci Code". Of course, this is guaranteed to boost sales, of what is already the biggest selling (adult hardcopy) fiction book in history. 25 million copies in print, translated into 44 languages, 104 weeks on the bestseller lists, and still in hardcover!

Note: I've been curious as to what other books beat DVC's sales records. For example, I've heard that the "Harry Potter" novels are around the 250 million mark for the entire series, but I've been unable to find a breakdown of which book is the biggest seller. I've also heard that certain eBooks have sold more copies, but I haven't been able to track down those titles either. Anyone here have a good source for that kind of info?

- Elonka :)

Vatican goes on offensive against 'Da Vinci Code'

As those with long memories will remember, I memed in October 2003 (http://www.memestreams.net/thread/bid8816/) that I would eventually post an audio file of me being interviewed on the "Charles Jaco in the Morning" radio program.

It took awhile to get the audio file, and longer to get around to posting it, but hey, it's finally up. :)

Cyrillic Projector on the Radio, 10/13/2003

The webcounter continues to spin...

When the Wired.com article first went live on Friday, my site got about 8000 visitors (usual baseline traffic is around 500). Then on Saturday, somebody else picked up the Wired article. I'm not certain who, since they didn't link me directly, but my guess is fark.com. That brought in another 9000 visitors or so.

Then earlier today (Sunday), the Wired article got picked up on Slashdot. The webcounter is still RPM-ing, but it looks like about 35,000 new visitors just this afternoon.

Whee!

Slashdot: Decrypting Kryptos