Like what the hunt for the Golden Owl may have provoked in France until the mystery was resolved, other enigmas create an absolute fascination around the planet, pushing certain individuals to sacrifice part of their existence to try to decipher them. This is the case of the mystery linked to the large sculpture created by the artist Jim Sanborn for the CIA, installed in 1990 in the courtyard of the headquarters of the American intelligence agency, in Langley (Virginia), and which is still the subject of many questions today.
Smithsonian magazine describes a work consisting of a curved copper panel flanked by petrified wood, where Jim Sanborn has engraved 1,735 letters in disarray, all forming four coded messages. The facility, known as Kryptoshas already revealed some of its secrets: three of the four messages could be deciphered. But the fourth and final one still resists and there are only a few months left for investigators around the world to try to decode it.
In November 2025, Jim Sanborn plans to auction the complete solution of Kryptoswhose value is currently estimated at around 500,000 dollars (nearly 429,000 euros). This will notably include the keys allowing K4 to be decrypted, the hitherto inviolable message which would have “destroys marriages” and would have earned its author more than one death threat, explains the artist to the Washington Post.
For Jim Sanborn, it’s time to reveal the solution because he doesn’t want to take it to his grave. “I could collapse at any momenthe summarizes, and I would be more calm if I knew that the situation was under control. In a recent open letter, Jim Sanborn writes that his decision to sell the solution was difficult, but necessary: “I no longer have the physical, mental or financial resources.”
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Just an “iqlusion”
The four codes, including K4, are the result of a collaboration between the artist and Edward Scheidt, former president of the CIA Cryptography Center, who had met “more or less in secret”. “He trained me in code, in modern codes, in contemporary coding systems – at least contemporary in 1988.”
In the first three messages, those which have been decrypted, it is a question of secrecy and discovery. “Between the subtle nuances and the absence of light hides the nuance of iqlusion»said the first, the typo on the last word being deliberate. The second was “Does Langley know? They should: it’s buried somewhere. X, who knows the exact location? Only WW.” Note that these last initials refer to William Webster, former president of the CIA, whose headquarters are located in Langley.
As for the third message, which also contains deliberate errors, it is a passage adapted from Egyptologist Howard Carter’s account of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Here is the corrected version: “Slowly, desperately slowly, the debris of the passage which obstructed the lower part of the door was removed. With a trembling hand, I made a tiny dent in the upper left corner.”
As early as 2010, then in 2014 and 2020, Jim Sanborn provided clues to detectives trying to solve the K4 message, but they were never enough. Daily, he receives messages at his home containing assumptions. These are so numerous that he now demands that a payment of 50 dollars be made to him by each person wishing to submit their theories to him.
Once K4 has been solved, the four messages combined would provide a final mystery sentence, considered the ultimate solution to the enigma. Will it be possible to get there before November? This is less and less likely, but the urgency in which the participants of this gigantic game now find themselves will perhaps push some of them to show enough genius to achieve this.
