introductions
I’m Katherine Miller and this is my brand new blog about K4. This semester I am enrolled in a three credit special topics course on unsolved ciphers under the guidance of Dr. Brooke Stephens. My goals are as follows:
- To spend a significant amount of time navigating the enormous depths of information on Kryptos and theories for solving K4, and compile my favorite and what I believe to be the most useful and interesting information into a well organized and easily readable indexed collection of knowledge that may be helpful to those just learning about Kryptos, as I was just a few months ago.
- To familiarize myself with the methods of cryptanalysis currently being tried on K4, as well as those that have been tried unsuccessfully. Additionally I hope to devise some of my own theories, and be able to carry out experiments that may shed some light on what types of methods are and aren’t likely to have been used to encrypt K4.
- To (hopefully!) be a functioning part of the Kryptos community with even a super small contribution to the efforts to solve K4.
I think, as most people do, that it is absolutely fascinating that a cipher which has been sitting at the Central Intelligence Agency for over 15 years has not been cracked despite the fact that the CIA is supposed to employ the best and brightest. Additionally fascinating is the fact that this sculpture has gained such worldwide fame and yet, not a single mathematician, computer scientist, or even puzzle fanatic has managed to crack K4 (that we know of). Because of this I certainly do not predict that in the course of the semester I will be able to even scratch the surface of cracking K4, but like other fans of this mysterious puzzle I am going to try everything I can think of out of sheer fascination and curiosity, and record it here. This way I will have an easily maintained and searchable record of my thoughts and a place to compile my lists of quotes, clues, and other information that I think should be together in lists.
Originally I was going to make this blog private or password protected, because I didn’t plan to have anyone else access it besides myself and my professor Dr. Stephens. However I’ve noticed that there are many people with personal Kryptos blogs and websites (my favorites listed on the right), and thought that it might be nice to join the club. While we can’t be sure that the solution to K4 will come out of a collaboration, it is not as much fun to work alone : )
