Experiment 113
The rail fence, writing the message in a zigzag over r rails and reading rail by rail, is the oldest hand transposition and is in none of the route sets so far. Here every rail count 2-48 and every start phase, with the rails read top to bottom, bottom to top, or (up to 6 rails) in every order (the redefence), forward and inverse, with a repeating key of length 1-26 after or before.
What the method does with the 24 known letters.
The rail fence is a schoolbook way to scramble letters: write the messagethe message The 97 letters of English that Jim Sanborn wrote and enciphered. in a zigzag down and up over a few lines, like a fence, then read each line in turn. Here we try every number of lines up to 48, every starting point of the zigzag, and for up to six lines every order of reading them, with a short repeating secret word on the tablethe table The right-hand half of the sculpture, 26 rows of the alphabet each shifted one place further, starting from the word KRYPTOS. before or after, against the 24 known lettersthe known letters Sanborn has confirmed that positions 22 to 34 of the message read EASTNORTHEAST and positions 64 to 74 read BERLINCLOCK..
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.
The rail fence writes the message in a zigzag across a few lines and reads each line in turn; the redefence reads the lines in a chosen order. Both are classic hand transpositions.
After the move a repeating secret word on the table must give the copper's letters where the known letters landed; two known letters in one slot of the word must agree.
12,784 settings of 2 to 6 rails, every start and rail order, keys of 1 to 26 before or after: nothing below period 22, and every count inside the range of ten scrambled coppers.
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.
rail fence of 3 rails from the top: rails 1 2 3 2 1 2 3 ..., read rail 1, then 2, then 3
place letter rail lands at copper there
22 E 2 36 T
23 A 3 79 Z
24 S 2 37 W
25 T 1 7 X
64 B 2 57 I
Family, key space, the constraint under test, and the clues it reads.
Type 1 and type 4 (a hand route as the masking step, C4; 'double matrixes', C1). Routes: zigzag over r = 2-48 rails, start phase 0 to 2r-3 (the first letter on any rail, going down or up), rails read in order or reversed, and for r <= 6 in all r! orders (redefence); forward and inverse, deduplicated. Key: periodic 1-26 after the move (slot = carved place mod p) or before it, 8 tableau classes, exact by slot agreement. Ten shuffled coppers.
Written before the run; the result decides it.
Nothing consistent below period 20; counts inside the coppers' range, give or take one period. Zero candidates.
The harness's record: candidates, gates, loss, and the negative result this experiment leaves behind.
12,784 rail settings, 12,784 distinct routes x 8 classes x 2 orders, periods 1-26. K4 live below 20: 0. Outside the control range: {'A': [], 'B': []}.
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.