Experiment 211
A1.3 (Stage 2, step 2, issue #76), the part 0210 left out: 0117 required all 24 known letters (change then move: the 23 key differences matched by hash; move then change: a pair index filtered check by check, deepest 8 of 24). Here both orders allow up to 3 failed checks: change then move by a pigeonhole index (4 blocks of 6 known places; 3 slips leave one block whole, whose 5 key differences are looked up), move then change by 4 disjoint pairs of known places (3 slips leave one pair whole, looked up by its key difference at its gap). Both compiled; same sources, numberings, 12 conventions and 0117's route library unchanged; K4 against 10 scrambled copies; two planted messages (one per order) with 3 and 2 slips.
What the method does with the 24 known letters.
Experiment 117 took the sculpture's own texts as a long key, let the whole table slide by any of 26 places, and tried it with and without the grid scrambles of experiments 80-83. Nothing gave 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.. Here the same search allows Sanborn up to three slipsa slip A mistake made while enciphering by hand: a wrong row or column of the table at one letter, so the carved letter is not the one the method gives there. at those 24 places, on the carving and on scrambled copiesa shuffled control The same experiment run on the carved letters shuffled into a random order., with two messages of our own hidden the same way, slips included, to check the search finds them.
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.
Sanborn was surprised nobody had run the original matrix through all the possible shifts. Experiment 117 did, with the sculpture's texts as the key and every grid move, and found nothing with all 24 known letters; three slips would have hidden it.
The same search, both orders (move first or table first), every route, table, shift and offset, allowing 3 of the 24 known letters to disagree, found through a block or a pair of known places that must agree; K4, 10 copies, two planted messages.
No setting with 3 or fewer slips on K4 or any copy (chance about 10^-14); both planted messages found at their own route, table, text, offset and shift.
What this experiment was built on, from the lineage page: 6 experiments before it, back to the root of its line. Its number is in bold.
This experiment produced no candidate: the search ruled everything out before a full text was built. Its product is the bounded negative under Result and bounds below.
Redo the method on a few letters with pencil and paper.
The same steps run by the code on the real letters.
key text: the four ciphertexts as one panel, offset 0; KRYPTOS table, Vigenere, no move
place known carved needed offered needed - offered
22 E F 1 0 1
23 A L 10 1 9
24 S R 21 19 2
25 T V 18 6 12
64 B N 11 22 15
65 E Y 17 12 5
74 K K 0 23 3
the most common value of the last column covers 2 of 24 places; a shift with 3 slips needs 21
Family, key space, the constraint under test, and the clues it reads.
C2(b) (Sanborn 2003: 'surprised that no one had tried recovering the original matrix and running it through all the possible shifts'), C6(a) (keys concealed at the sculpture), C1(a) (a matrix stage), with A1 (knowledge/12-assumptions.md) and C27(a) (the PALIMPCEST slip). Model as 0117: c = E(p, y[o + i] + s) for a key text y numbered on the standard or KRYPTOS alphabet, offset o, constant s 0-25, E one of 12 conventions (Vigenere, Beaufort, variant; plain and cipher alphabets standard or KRYPTOS); with a type-1 move before the table (move then change: key aligned to carved places) or after it (change then move: key aligned to message places); key texts the carved tableau (rows, rows with index, columns), the Morse (carved, reversed order), the four ciphertexts, K1-K3 plaintexts, Sanborn's 1989 letter, the 1991 dedication texts, the 2025 open letter, forward and backward, every cyclic offset; Carter's book in the change-then-move order only (as 0117). A slip at known place q makes its equation fail; settings with at most 3 failures are counted, K4 against each copy. Chance of any setting with 3 or fewer slips on a text: about 10^-15 (change then move, 4 x 10^11 trials) and 10^-17 (move then change), so the 24 checks decide at k <= 3.
Written before the run; the result decides it.
No setting with 3 or fewer slips on K4 or on any copy, in either order. Both planted messages are found at their own route, convention, key text, offset and shift, with exactly their slips. Zero candidates on K4.
The harness's record: candidates, gates, loss, and the negative result this experiment leaves behind.
K4 settings with <= 3 slips (change-then-move 0-3, move-then-change 0-3): [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]; copies [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]; plants found [True, True]
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.