Experiment 29
The statistic is the size of the forced shift, not its recurrence. For every alphabet pair and mode the 24 forced shifts are reduced to circular magnitudes 0-13, and the pair with the smallest largest magnitude is the lead; ten shuffled controls say what chance gives.
What the method does with the 24 known letters.
A cryptanalyst noticed that several known letters barely move: S becomes R, T becomes V, K stays K. If the whole cipher only nudged letters a little along some alphabet, that alphabet would make every one of the 24 known moves small. We try every alphabet the puzzle's wordsthe puzzle's words A list of 62 words tied to the sculpture: the earlier secret words, place names, the names of the people involved, the words in the Morse code, and the themes Sanborn has named. can build, measure the biggest nudge each needs, and keep the alphabet with the smallest biggest nudge. Random lettersa shuffled control The same experiment run on the carved letters shuffled into a random order. tell us how small that can get by luck.
Words in the margin are defined on the glossary page.
The carved letters go in at the top; the reading comes out at the bottom.
Bean noticed that on the sculpture's alphabet several known letters sit close to their carved letters. If the key only ever moved letters a little, every known letter would be close.
Over 184,512 alphabet pairs, the best one still needs a move of 8 places somewhere. Ten shuffled coppers do as well or better, between 7 and 9.
The closeness belongs to a few letters of KRYPTOS that sit near each other in both alphabets. No alphabet pair extends it to all 24.
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.
Redo the method on a few letters with pencil and paper.
The same steps run by the code on the real letters.
standard alphabet for both message and carved letters, Vigenere: nudge per known letter
pos plain carved nudge
22 E F 1
23 A L 11
24 S R 1 (KRYPTOS letter)
25 T V 2 (KRYPTOS letter)
26 N Q 3
27 O Q 2 (KRYPTOS letter)
28 R P 2 (KRYPTOS letter)
29 T R 2 (KRYPTOS letter)
30 H N 6
31 E G 2
32 A K 10
33 S S 0 (KRYPTOS letter)
34 T S 1 (KRYPTOS letter)
64 B N 12
65 E Y 6
66 R P 2 (KRYPTOS letter)
67 L V 10
68 I T 11
69 N T 6
70 C M 10
71 L Z 12
72 O F 9 (KRYPTOS letter)
73 C P 13
74 K K 0 (KRYPTOS letter)
Family, key space, the constraint under test, and the clues it reads.
Bean (knowledge/04-structure.md): the ten crib plaintext letters that lie in KRYPTOS sit within 0-2 places of their ciphertext letters on the standard alphabet, about one permutation in 5,520, and he reads K4 as letter-for-letter with a cipher alphabet near the standard one. A Gronsfeld-like key of small digits, or any system whose shifts are small under the right pair of alphabets, would show as a pair under which all 24 forced shifts have small circular magnitude. Over the 248-alphabet pool squared and three modes, 184,512 pairs, the chance that a pair keeps all 24 magnitudes at or below 3 is (7/26)^24, about 10^-14 per pair; at or below 6 it is (13/26)^24, about 6 x 10^-8 per pair, so a largest magnitude of 6 or less would be a lead and 3 or less decisive. Ten shuffles of K4 calibrate the smallest largest-magnitude. Bounds: complete for this pool; diagnostic, no candidate.
Written before the run; the result decides it.
The smallest largest magnitude over all pairs is 9 or 10, the same as on shuffled K4. Under the standard-standard pair the KRYPTOS-letter cribs are close, as Bean found, but the other fourteen cribs are not, and no pair makes all 24 small.
The harness's record: candidates, gates, loss, and the negative result this experiment leaves behind.
Diagnostic, no candidates. Smallest largest magnitude over 184512 pairs: 8 (BERLIN/alt_vertical / LAYER/columnar beau); shuffled K4 gives [8, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 8, 8].
What was searched, as the harness recorded it.
How this experiment sits among the others is on the lineage page; its family's open hypotheses are on the families page.