The first three parts of Kryptos' encoded message have been solved (although just last month sculptor James Sanborn alerted the world to a mistake he made, which changed the meaning a tad), and now fans are focused on deciphering part four. Elonka guesses that there isn't a prize associated with the solution, unlike in her new book, "The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms." Turns out, there's a puzzle hidden among the puzzles -- how meta, Elonka! -- and if you figure it out, she'll give you a little something. Thus far, no one's managed to crack it ...

And here's a link to the PDF of the actual article in today's tabloid "Washington Post Express." At least, it says on the main page that it's "A Publication of the Washington Post." The fact-checking and editing is a bit weak (My comments were heavily mis-quoted throughout the article, to the point of disseminating some false information), but at least I'm not being set up for anything truly outlandish, like breaking up Britney Spears' marriage or building a secret underground base with aliens or something. ;) Overall, it's "good" publicity - good pic, upbeat article, links to my site, spells my name right, and drops a hint about the meta-puzzle. No major complaints!

Elonka :)

Washington Post Express: Code Warrioress

The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms
Elonka Dunin

Cool, my book made the front page of the "Carroll & Graf" publishers' website....

Elonka :)

Carroll and Graf Publishers

ELONKA DUNIN, CODE BREAKER: The news just kind of spread like wildfire. The race was on to see who could crack it first.

This is a transcript of Friday's MSNBC "Countdown" segment. The "Judge's Code" story was #2 on the countdown, and I was one of the talking heads. Check this meme to read the transcript, or if you want to download a video of the segment, check here for hires (18 MB) and lores (2 MB) versions. But to save time, the transcript is probably sufficient. ;)

BTW, for anyone with audio/video capture chops, who is within reading range of this blog: I have been having a heck of a time figuring out how to get decent audio quality out of my video capture card (Hauppage WinTV, captured into Windows Movie Maker). No matter what I do, it seems to record at a very very high volume, and then after I save the movie, the volume comes out softer, but with the distortion as though it's still very loud. I've searched around for tech help on this but haven't had much luck. If anyone can offer suggestions / help on how to fix this (aside from "spend thousands of dollars on better equipment"), I would be most appreciative!

Elonka :)

MSNBC.com - Elonka Dunin on 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann', April 28, 2006

A local expert on puzzles was one of the first to try and crack that code.
Elonka Dunin, a cryptologist of St. Charles says she is happy for the man who did crack the code.

Here's the webpage at St. Louis KMOV, with a brief article and video stream on last night's 6 p.m. report, where I'm one of the "talking heads" about the Smithy Code.

I noticed that several of the reporters I talked to (including the KMOV interviewer) would ask me leading questions like, "Are you angry that Tench did it first?" "Are you disappointed?" "Are you frustrated?" "Are you annoyed?". To which I'd usually counter with, "No, I'm happy for him that he got it, though I will point out that the judge gave him lots of hints, and I think that my group (the Kryptos Group) would've had it within a day anyway -- we were already working on the Fibonacci angle."

But of course, the news agencies use sound bytes, and so we end up with "Elonka Dunin is happy for him." ;) Overall though, the segment was a good one. The reporter asked good questions, the interview area was very relaxed and comfortable (gone are the days of bright lights making the interviewees sweat -- these days the cameras seem to work just fine with natural light), and they got a video stream up on their website right away!

Elonka :)

(note: Free registration may be required to see this page)

KMOV.com - 'Local cryptologist one of first to try to crack code in Da Vinci ruling'

By DEREK KRAVITZ
The Associated Press
Thursday, April 27, 2006; 7:12 PM

LONDON -- Parts of London's legal community ground to a virtual halt Thursday with lawyers turning into aspiring code-breakers as they tried to decipher a hidden message inserted into "The Da Vinci Code" trial judgment.

With the revelation that Judge Peter Smith inserted a secret code of his own into the April 7 judgment that cleared "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown in his copyright infringement case, lawyers have been hustling to solve the puzzle.
 
Since the code was discovered earlier this week, lawyers, cryptographers and "The Da Vinci Code" fans have worked furiously to decipher the mystery message.

"It's so short," U.S. cryptographer Elonka Dunin, of St. Charles, Mo., said of Smith's code. "It's only a tiny snippet. If it were a few pages of code, it'd already be cracked."

Dunin said this type of code has no word divisions and is normally 75 to 100 characters. Smith's code offers roughly 30 cryptic letters.

But despite her frustration, Dunin said the judge has left some clues.

The New York Times reported that Smith sent an e-mail to a reporter at the newspaper that offered a hint. It said the code referred to his entry in this year's edition of Britain's "Who's Who," which has references to his wife, Diane, his three children, British naval officer Jackie Fisher, and the Titanic Historical Society _ among other things.

"With the crypto community's attention turning toward this code, it'll be cracked within 24 hours," Dunin said.

The reporter got things mostly right. I said it *might* be a patristocrat cipher, but it turned out to be a kind of polyalphabetic substitution, using the Fibonacci sequence as a key. It did indeed, however, fall within 24 hours. The prize goes to Daniel Tench, a London attorney who'd already been working on it for a couple weeks (see his column in The Guardian).

I'm also laughing because I couldn't have asked for better book promotion. My "Mammoth Book of Secret Codes" was just released in the U.K. today (Thursday). If it weren't for the fact that I know better, I'd wonder if it was a secret conspiracy....

Elonka :)

AP/Washington Post: London Lawyers Turn Into Code-Breakers

April 26, 2006:

Samuel Morse's birth 215 years ago today brings to mind his Morse code -- a dots-and-dashes communication system he developed along with the telegraph -- as well as other codes and ciphers. Let's get cracking.
 . . .
Amateur cryptographer Elonka Dunin's Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers directory offers a thorough overview and links to more information about cryptographic mysteries that continue to perplex enthusiasts today.

Nice article in the Star Tribune, celebrating Morse's birthday, and linking to various code sites around the web.

Minneapolis Star Tribune: 'Do you know the CODE?'

As we reported in the Law Diary on Tuesday, there appears to be a secret code written by Mr Justice Peter Smith into his (now famous) judgment on The Da Vinci Code case. This will undoubtedly attract unfair criticism from some of the more stuffy and staid members of the legal profession.

But Mr Justice Smith has revealed the more playful side of his nature by continuing the honourable tradition of making judgments more accessible by engaging with the reader. Lord Denning famously began one case, "It was Bluebell time..." as he recounted the tale on which he was to pronounce. Another has adjudicated in rhyme and another in couplets. All of this engages the reader in what would otherwise be dry and dusty prose.

I have now cracked the code. The judge refers readers to a sentence in paragraph 52 of the judgment saying it would help readers figure out what he meant. That sentence reads: "The key to solving the conundrum posed by this judgment is in reading HBHG and DVC,'' A better clue might be for you to look at the italics in the judgment. Post your own theories below.

I've been too busy to look at this in detail myself, but it appears that the first part is a font-based system similar to what appears on the inside flaps of The Da Vinci Code, only where the characters were in bold there, they're in italics in the judgment. The first part is easy English, and then it evidently switches systems. From the posts on this page, this appears to be the breakdown:

p5: s m i t h y c o d e J
p6: a e i e x
p7: t o s t
p8: g p s a
p9: c g r e a
p10: m q w f
p11: k a
p12: d p m q
p13:z v

Enjoy,

Elonka :)

Times Online: The Judge's Da Vinci Code code

The BBC Radio segment aired on their Tuesday morning -- the "Pods & Blogs" segment on Five Live.

In terms of interviewers, I was actually quite disappointed in them. In fact, of all the radio shows I've been on, BBC Radio was clearly the worst, which surprised and saddened me, since I'd thought better of BBC.

Their producer initially contacted me about doing a segment with James Sanborn on Friday afternoon. They scheduled a time, but ended up calling us late, and then when we went on the air, we each got to say just one or two sentences, and then the interviewer interrupted us with, "Sorry, out of time, and I'm not understanding this anyway," and they cut us off and ended the segment rather suddenly.

To the producer's credit, he sent me a letter of apology later in the day. And for what it's worth, I was able to learn from the mistakes of the BBC segment, in order to make the later NPR segment even better, so I thanked the BBC producer for that, and he offered to try again on Monday, with what was implied to be a longer segment about my book (which is coming out in the UK on Thursday).

So I agreed to the second segment, but again, they ran late with previous programming, kept sending me emails saying, "Just a few more minutes", and then when they *did* call, I found out that it was going to be for a pre-recorded segment instead of live. Further, I found out that they now wanted me to be the caller in a two-DJ "make fun of the caller" segment. But I adapted to that and we managed to have a more or less fun time with it.

Then when I asked them when the segment was going to air, they said, "In a couple hours" and that they'd contact me and tell me when, but they never did (I found out after the fact that it aired several hours after we recorded it). So then I went looking for it on the BBC website to find out if I could listen to the recording, but couldn't find any audio file, and their site looks weeks out of date.

So I wrote to the producer, and he apologized and sent me a link of where the show could be found. The audio file is there, but there's no program description so it's not searchable. Further, I'm told that it's only going to be there for a week, and then it's going to be deleted!

So, I had a big "thumbs down" for BBC at the moment. But, the segment came out okay, if you don't mind the silly humor and them mispronouncing my name. And they did at least mention my book.

For anyone who wants to listen to it before it gets deleted, go to this link, click on "Latest Pods & Blogs", and that should start up the BBC Radio Player on the lefthand side. If you're using a compatible browser (IE yes, Firefox probably not, and not sure about Mac), you can use the arrows to fast forward to just past the "18:10" mark, to listen to the 10-minute Kryptos segment.

And if BBC Radio ever calls and asks you to be on one of their programs, be warned.

(2-May-2006 update: The stream is now offline, but a mirror can be located here)

BBC Radio: Pods & Blogs (and Kryptos, oh my!)

This episode is hosted by P(?)NYB(?)Y and Elonka Dunin. The topic of the show is Cryptography and the Kryptos sculpture. In an obvious attempt to gain listeners, i feel obligated to tell you that this episode of BellCoreRadio contains clues, both to the Kryptos code as well as a code in Elonkas new book, that have
never before been released to the public!

I co-hosted the latest episode of BellCoreRadio, after having met the host, P0nyb0y, at the Notacon hacker conference in Cleveland. The "show" is basically an hour of the two of us chatting about Kryptos, the K2 announcement and related media attention, and my book.

Caveat: The audio levels on the podcast are a bit erratic, so keep your volume control close at hand while listening. If you can work through the sound quality though, it's (IMHO) an interesting conversation.

Elonka :)

Click on the "MP3" or "OGG" link at this URL, as appropriate:

Hacker Media - BellCoreRadio #32

All Things Considered, April 21, 2006 ? A sculptural cryptogram at the CIA's headquarters that has intrigued people for years may have flaws in its design, says its creator. For more than a decade, professional cryptologists and amateur code breakers have been trying to decipher Kryptos, an encrypted sculpture at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.
But it turns out that the artist made the challenge a bit more complicated than he intended. Melissa Block talks with James Sanborn, the sculptor who recently realized a mistake in the piece, and Elonka Dunin, a cryptologist who maintains a website on the sculpture.

Audio stream, for anyone who wants to listen to yesterday's "All Things Considered" segment. I had to grip my desk to keep my hands from shaking right before the segment, I was in such "fan-girl" mode. I was actually being interviewed by Melissa Block, wow!

Elonka :)

NPR : Enigmatic CIA Puzzle 'Kryptos' May Be Flawed