The Secret of Kryptos
The name Kryptos was mentioned very often when we asked for recommendations for escape rooms in Sofia.
Kryptos not only plays an important role in Dan Brown’s novel “The Lost Symbol”, Kryptos actually exists! It is a sculpture on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, created by Jim Sanborn in 1989. On it there is an encrypted inscription consisting of 869 letters in four parts. Three of them were independently deciphered by different codebreakers. The fourth text passage is still waiting to be deciphered and continues to cause headaches to cryptologists around the world.
If you want to know exactly, the fourth message is:
?OBKR
UOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFLRVQQPRNGKSSO
TWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBNYP
VTTMZFPKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEKCAR
After the creator of the sculpture had been silent for a long time, in 2010 he gave a first hint about the last message to be cracked. The letter combination NYPVTT in the fourth part stands for BERLIN. For five years this hint did not produce any results. Then Sanborn gave a second hint at the end of 2014. BERLIN is followed by CLOCK. But even with the knowledge of the letter combination BERLINCLOCK in plain text nobody found the solution yet.
To finally unveil the secret (and free the cryptologists from their headaches ?), we set off for Sofia. We received a warm welcome here from the owner. He is a passionate gamer himself and has developed an interesting game concept with a lot of effort. When entering the rooms, you immediately notice that this is no ordinary Escape Room. Everything is interactive, ingenious, modern and above all very well maintained. Not a single fingerprint on the chrome parts. Locks, keys, or objects to search for? Nothing! The tasks to be solved here are creative, challenging, and often only reveal themselves more and more as the game progresses. Puzzle lovers will have their real pleasure in this interactive room.
Even if we needed only 34 minutes for the 75 minutes room without tips, I would classify it at least as medium. We had a good run and the photos on the FB page suggest that such times are rather unusual.
By the way, The Secret of Kryptos can meanwhile also be played in Kuwait and Saint-Maximin (France, north of Paris). Game recommendation 3-4 cryptologists.
After 30 years the secret has finally been revealed and the only question that remains unanswered is why we were not asked in the first place ???
We liked Secret of Kryptos and voted it to the first place out of 23 Escape Games played in Sofia.
