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How to crack the code on Kryptos, a majestic sculpture that sits in the backyard of the CIA

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Jim Sanborn is the only person who knows the answer to the code on Kryptos, a sculpture that sits behind CIA headquarters in Langley , Virginia .

In the 1990s , the CIA , NSA , and a Rand Corporation computer scientist independently came up with translations for three of the sculpture’s four panels of scrambled letters.

But the final segment, known as K4, was encoded with knottier techniques and remains unsolved.

The artist has dropped clues to the solution, sharing plaintext translations of several words in the 97 -character panel.

At times, Sanborn has been surprised at the lack of progress.

He once mused that at some point the best course would be to auction off the answer with the money going to climate science.