I have a resolution to not assume anything about the context and perspective of the information we possess. As a hypothetical exercise, allow me the following:
Ed Scheidt made this thing absolutely uncrackable. I don’t care if Ray Kurzweil and Doug Hofstedter get together start a Skynet singularity with a million supercrays turned up to eleven. IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN. I’m SURE of it. Trust me on this. Kryptos will be solved when somebody figures out what Ed wanted to say, which is of course, beautifully elliptical, because part of his statement will be exactly when that happens. The supercrays can continue to pound sand, ad infinitum. I suggest everybody abandon the idea that were are going to find any loose threads, like cribs and such, that will get us anywhere.
Ed’s ideas are far more artistic than anybody has thus given credit for. Sanborn, has translated some of these ideas for us. Unfortunately, we’re all so confused by the inability to establish a definitive context for these clues, that we’re collectively like the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.
Let’s go back to the creator: What are the “commandments” that Ed must have had to follow in order to make any of this lesson in intelligence possible?
Well, I’ll tell you.
1.) Compose your message, which reflects your wisdom earned in a lifetime of hard earned experience, reflection, and emulation of some of the 20th Century’s greatest minds.
2.) Remove all unencryptable signals from the message, like spaces, puctuation or newlines.
3.) Pad the message with random characters (to conceal the original message’s length).
4.) Use a secret key of only random characters.
5.) Use a secret key that is at least as long as the message.
6.) Protect the knowledge of the secret key. Kill anybody other than the receiver that may know how to get it. (metaphorically of course)
7.) Never use the secret key again.
8.) Disappear into an alternate identity.
9.) Enjoy cake, while eating it too at the specified time and place…NSA’s picking up the tab.