CIA sculpture artist reveals final clue in 30-year code mystery

For almost three decades, a sculpture containing coded messages in the grounds of the CIA’s headquarters has baffled cryptographers across the world.

But a solution to the sculpture’s fourth and final uncracked code may be on the horizon, after its creator announced he was offering one last clue to the passage.

Kryptos, named after the ancient Greek word for hidden, is a 3.6m copper scroll that was created by Jim Sanborn, an American sculptor, for the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Sanborn, who created the puzzles with the help of a former CIA cryptographer in 1990, said he was offering one final clue because, at the age of 74, the regular inquiries from amateur sleuths had become exhausting.

The first passage is a poetic phrase composed by Sanborn himself, which when deciphered reads: ‘‘Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion.’’

The artist said the deliberate misspelling at the end was to add to the puzzle’s complexity.

The second passage refers to the location of the CIA’s headquarters by latitude and longitude.

The third relates to British archaeologist Howard Carter’s account of excavating the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

Cryptographers say the fourth passage has proved so elusive because it is so short, with just — characters.

Sanborn has provided two previous clues, revealing the 64th to 69th characters spelt ‘‘BERLIN’’ in 2010 and revealing the next five characters spelt the word ‘‘CLOCK’’ in 2014.

The final clue, ‘‘NORTHEAST’’, gives the answer to characters 26 to 34.

Sanborn said if the puzzle remained unsolved before his death, he would put the solution up for auction, with the proceeds going to climate science causes.

But Kryptos still holds one final mystery: the full text of the sculpture contains a riddle.