Kryptos Last Shot

- Zackery Belanger
(updated 19 November 2025)

New document describing last-minute solution attempt.

                           TYNE
DDUALFUMEVENTSITSEASTNORTHEASTF
UMEDUCTSWELDBYFOOTFAITHTEARSBER
LINCLOCKWOMANDECRYPTSMAGICJOLTS

TYNED DUAL FUME VENT SITS EAST NORTHEAST
FUME DUCTS WELD BY FOOT
FAITH TEARS BERLIN CLOCK
WOMAN DECRYPTS MAGIC JOLTS

On November 20 2025 the secrets of Jim Sanborn’s Kryptos will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. This impending event drove the difficult decision to release my incomplete work on Kryptos in mid October, including proposed K3 WONDERFUL and a new ciphertext that I thought was K5, though this conflicts with information recently released. In early November I also found a potential solution to K4 (or maybe it’s K5). On November 18 I refined that potential solution.

Kryptos New Ciphertext (03 Nov 2024):

UEOSFOMJDDEYUMIOISIRYHDRGEBHHKEQ
HXУOЫЙAOЦЧMXЧЙЧДПУCФЮЗ
XHЖPБЫЖЦФЪБCЧPПMЦЧШTXККЖПЩЗПЙXГO

Kryptos K3 WONDERFUL Alphabet (July 2024):

AGOLJFYXQHWZSMTNCVKRPUIB?DE

The first 32 characters of the new ciphertext are from the Latin alphabet, and the final 54 characters are from the Cyrillic alphabet.

The derivations of the new ciphertext, K3 WONDERFUL, the first 100 steps of the last solution attempt, and a mess of other layers and notes, can be found in the document linked above.

Three books are required in the most recent K4 solution attempt, in this order:

Beckett, Samuel. “Rockaby And Other Short Pieces”. Grove Press, Inc. New York. 1981.

Davis, Robin J. and Butler, Lance St. J. “Make Sense Who May: Essays on Samuel Beckett’s Later Works”. Barnes & Noble Books. Totowa, New Jersey. 1988.

Wordsworth, William. “The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth”. Volume II. Little, Brown and Company. Boston. 1859

Wordsworth was so widely published that this particular edition may not be necessary, and/or another edition could be more useful.

The K4 method is many-layer and relies on clues expressed in the ciphertext at each layer. A more careful explanation of these layers and a writeup of the rest of it is underway, but will take time. Here’s an outline of the basic structure:

1. Pull a custom alphabet from the K4 ciphertext itself by eliminating duplicate characters. Include the ?.

2. Apply a “CORYMB” transposition, which mimics the inflorescence structure (take off the first character, then the last, then the second, then second-to-last, etc.).

3. Use the final 98 characters of the six endings in “Rockaby” as running keys over and over, choosing each depending on the previous clue. There are some transpositions in there as well, indicated by the clues.

4. Shift every character in the entire ciphertext by values 1 - 6, alternating positive and negative, based on the sequence of six endings used. (pages 147 - 148)

5. Apply a running key from one of the previous Kryptos solutions.

6. Assemble a new ciphertext by sequentially assembling a character from the previous 97 layers.

7. Apply running keys from “Make Sense Who May” based on the clues.

8. Apply 27 running key simultaneously from Wordsworth’s “The Wishing Gate” and “The Wishing Gate - Destroyed”. Keys are chosen based on the presence of the terms VOW, TEAR, and LOVE.

9. The previous 17 layers produce a grid, from which the K4 plaintext can be painstakingly extracted. Use a sequence from the custom alphabet as markers, and use the content of the running keys from “Make Sense Who May” and Wordsworth to guide selection.

-Zackery Belanger
05 November 2025 (updated 19 November 2025)