Experiment 21

“A running key from Howard Carter's book: the text K3 paraphrases, slid past K4 at every offset”

Key source is Carter's The Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen, volume one, the book K3 paraphrases, instead of the sculpture's own texts. About 330,000 letters, both directions, every offset.

revertedstatus
experiment 17parents
2 mintime, all phases
0candidates
0/24known letters
1

The experiment method

What the method does with the 24 known letters.

The third messagethe earlier messages The three solved parts of the sculpture. retells the moment Howard Carter first looked into Tutankhamun's tomb. The artist has said the earlier messages hold instructions for the last one. One old trick is to use a book as the keya running key A secret word as long as the message, taken from a book or another text.: line the book's letters up under the messagethe message The 97 letters of English that Jim Sanborn wrote and enciphered. and add them. We take Carter's own book, every page of it, and slide it along the fourth message at every possible starting point, forwards and backwardsa mirror Reading or writing the text from the end to the start., asking whether any position explains all 24 known letters.

Words in the margin are defined on the glossary page.

1.1

The method at work

The carved letters go in at the top; the reading comes out at the bottom.

OBKRUOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWEASTNORTHEASTOTWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBBERLINCLOCKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEKCARIN: THE COPPER, ALL 97 LETTERS, THE 24 KNOWN PLACES IN ACCENTthe key: Carter's text from letter 192,862 of 284,914, the closest start for one way of using the tableTLITTLEDOCKETSSTATINGCLEARLYWHATTHECONTENTSSHOULDHAVEBEENANDINONLYONECASEDIDTHEDOCKETBEARANYSORTOthe key letter each known place needsRDUMRIYWOYNKYELYOIECBAQK8 of 24 at the best of 284,817 starts; none of 13,675,872 trials came within twoOUT: NO READING; NO PASSAGE OF THE BOOK FITSEASTNORTHEASTBERLINCLOCK
the source

K3 quotes Howard Carter's account of opening Tutankhamun's tomb, so his book is a natural running key: the text written under the message, one letter per place, starting anywhere.

the check

Each known place needs one key letter. Drawn for one way of using the table at the start that matches most: 8 of 24.

the bound

Every start, forwards and backwards, under 24 ways of using the table: 13,675,872 trials, none within two of the 24.

2

Best candidate against the known letters

This experiment produced no candidate: the search ruled everything out before a full text was built. Its product is the bounded negative in section 7.

3

Walkthrough, by hand

Redo the method on a few letters with pencil and paper.

  1. Open the book at any point, say the words THE TOMB OF TUT ANKH AMEN, and write its letters under the message starting at position 1: T under O, H under B, E under K, and so on.
  2. Position 22 of the message is E; the book letter under it is the 22nd letter from where you opened.
  3. On the sculpture's table, find the row of that book letter and the column of E; the letter there should be the carved F.
  4. If it is not, count one miss and go on to the next known letter.
  5. After three misses, give up on this opening and move the book one letter along.
  6. Do this for every opening in the book, then with the book read backwards.
the worksheet: the first steps by hand, on squared paper
THE BOOK AS A RUNNING KEY: THE FIRST LETTERS OF THE SCAN UNDER PLACES 22 TO 29placeknowncarvedkey neededbook letter22EFRU23ALDM24SRUL25TVMI26NQRB27OQIR28RPYA29TRWRThe scan's first letters readWALKERMEMORIALGYMNASIUML. Under place 22sits its 22nd letter.Move the book one letter along and checkagain. By hand this is a few minutes perstart; the book has almost 285,000 startsin each direction.
4

Worked example, generated

The same steps run by the code on the real letters.

book opened at letter 40: TOMBOFTUTANKHAMENHOWARDCARTERANDACMACETHEFIRSTVOLU

pos  plain  book letter  E+key  carved  match
 22    E        R          F      F     yes
 23    A        D          L      L     yes
 24    S        C          I      R     no
 25    T        A          E      V     no
 64    B        O          G      N     no
 65    E        G          X      Y     no
5

Hypothesis, for a cryptanalyst

Family, key space, the constraint under test, and the clues it reads.

Sanborn: 'I have left instructions in the earlier text that refer to later text' and the K1-K3 answers 'contain clues to the fourth' (C7); K3 is Carter's account of opening the tomb, paraphrased, and the misspelt DESPARATLY and the 'can you see anything' line point at the book itself (knowledge/sources/carter-1923-tomb-of-tutankhamen-vol1.txt, an OCR scan). A running key from a printed book is the classic 1900-1945 hand system Scheidt taught (C5). Test: the book's letters, forward and backward, at every offset, under the 24 conventions, scored by crib mismatches; zero mismatches is a survivor and is decrypted; one or two are reported for the one-letter-error reading (C17) and for OCR damage. About 16 million trials; chance survival is 26 to the minus 24 each, and a near miss at two mismatches has chance about 10 to the minus 28 per trial. Bounds: complete for this text as scanned, both directions.

6

Prediction

Written before the run; the result decides it.

No offset in either direction explains all 24 known letters, and none comes within two. The best trial has four or more mismatches, which is chance among 16 million trials. Zero candidates pass.

7

Method

  1. Strip the scan to letters A-Z.
  2. For each direction, convention and offset, encrypt the 24 known plaintext letters with the book letters at their positions and count mismatches against the carved letters, stopping at the third mismatch.
  3. Keep every trial with two or fewer mismatches.
  4. Decrypt and submit any zero-mismatch trial.
8

Result and bounds

The harness's record: candidates, gates, loss, and the negative result this experiment leaves behind.

0candidates returned
0passed every gate
0/24known letters, best
–lowest loss
nonechampion before

13675872 trials; 0 survivors; 0 trials within two mismatches.

What was searched, as the harness recorded it.

family
running key from Carter 1923 vol. 1 (OCR scan)
letters
carter vol1 fwd
284,914
carter vol1 bwd
284,914
conventions
24
trials
13,675,872
fewest mismatches
more than 2
near misses
none
survivors
0

How this experiment sits among the others is on the lineage page; its family's open hypotheses are on the families page.

Rendered from the record on 2026-10-18 12:26 UTC; updated after every experiment.
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