Escape Game History: The Uncrackable Code of the Phaistos Disc

Both sides of the Phaistos Disc

The current obsession with codes and puzzles that every escape game fan enjoys has a very long history. Pretty much as long as humans have been able to communicate through language, we’ve had the burning desire to encrypt that communication. What can we say, we’re a complicated species.

One ancient example of our fondness for code-making—one that still has cryptologists scratching their heads—is the Phaistos Disc.

Found on the Mediterranean island of Crete in 1908, the Phaistos Disc is a 15 cm disc of fired clay with a spiral of symbols adorning each side. The 241 symbols are made up of only 45 signs, which can only mean one thing—the images aren’t just decoration, they’re trying to tell us something.

The archaeologist who found the disc, Luigi Pernier, continued excavations at the Phaistos palace site for years afterward, but no other example of the symbols was ever found. This makes not only the message the Phaistos Disc contains a mystery, but also its very origins—no one knows where in the world it came from (literally).

Since the Phaistos Disc was found in Crete, and is from very very long ago—the second millennium BC, to be exact—some people have gone so far as to connect the mysterious artifact to the legendary Maze of Daedelus—otherwise known as the home of the Minotaur.

While this seems highly unlikely, it’s as good a guess as any, as many archaeologists and crytography experts think there’s little chance of the message of the Phaistos Disc ever being solved, without any other examples of this symbol set to help decipher it. Some of the symbols resemble those from another writing system from the same geographical area, called Linear A. However, Linear A also hasn’t been solved, so no luck there.

It seems that the Phaistos Disc is a mystery we’re just going to have to learn to live with.

At Krakit Vancouver Escape Game, you have a much better chance of solving our codes. You can try out your hand at cryptography by booking a go in one of our four themed escape rooms.

Ingenuity, Charm, and Mystery: The Greatest Codes in History

The history of codebreaking isn’t just filled with mathematics and ciphers. And neither is it populated only by spies in trenchcoats and trilby hats. It also involves a whole lot of ingenuity, charm, and surprise—and even a whole bunch of regular, non-spy folks, who just happen to have a thing for brainy puzzles (much like us here at Krakit Vancouver Escape Game!).

Below we look at some of the most fascinating codes in human history, whether they have been long solved or are still keeping us guessing.

Edward Elgar's Dorabella Cipher

The Enigma

The reason that the Enigma code from World War II—recently recounted in the movie The Imitation Game (2014)—is such a famous cipher is not because it is unbroken, but because it has been solved. And by no easy means. The amount of ingenuity required by Alan Turing and his Bletchley Park team to crack the code was astounding, with the very real goal of saving human lives and ending the war.

The Dorabella Cipher

The stakes of cracking the Dorabella Cipher are nowhere near as high as they were for the Enigma team. In fact, by comparison, the story of the Dorabella Cipher is positively charming.

English composer and code-enthusiastic Edward Elgar is the cryptographer behind this 87-character message, written for his friend Dora Penny (who he called Dorabella). Penny claimed never to have been able to solve the message, and its contents remain a mystery to this day. However, some codebreakers say the reason for this is because it’s not a message at all, but a coded composition. (Makes sense!)

Cicada 3301

Not strictly a code, the mystery of Cicada 3301 instead involves a set of puzzles that have been unleashed upon the public once per year since 2012 (or, almost once per year: there was no puzzle in 2015). According to Cicada 3301, the reason for the puzzles—which heavily feature cryptography and computer programming—is to recruit codebreakers from the general public. Recruit them for what, exactly, is not clear.

For more codebreaking hijinks, check out our posts on the Kryptos Sculpture at the CIA, the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, and the ciphers of the Zodiac Killer.

Or, even better, get your very own brain in code-cracking mode at one of our four escape rooms by booking here: http://bookeo.com/krakit

Hijinks at the CIA: The Unsolved Kryptos Sculpture

Kryptos by Jim Sanborn, at CIA headquarters in Langley

Photo: Jim Sanborn (CC BY-SA 3.0)

When you think “CIA,” the first thought that pops into your head usually isn’t “fun guys.” But the notoriously stern-faced organization must have some sense of fun (or maybe even a sense of humour?), since their headquarters at Langley is home to one unusual and perplexing work of art: the Kryptos sculpture.

Here at Krakit, we know that art and logic combine to highly fun ends—that’s our Vancouver escape room in a nutshell—and the Kryptos sculpture is testament to that.

Created by artist Jim Sanborn in 1990, the copper and wood sculpture features four ciphers, or coded messages. Composed of 2,000 letters in total, the ciphers presented a challenge not only to the codebreakers and logicians employed by the CIA, but also to the public at large.

It took five years for a group of clever clogs at the National Security Agency (NSA) to break the first codes (although this was kept secret), with the first member of the public, computer scientist Jim Gillogly, announcing his computer-aided solution a year later, in 1996.

However—only three of the four ciphers have been solved to this day.

The final cipher, a mere 97 letters, has yet to be cracked. Sanborn, one of two people who know the puzzle’s solution, has released two clues since the sculpture was unveiled. In 2010, he revealed that letters 64 to 69 spell “BERLIN.” Still, nada. So in November 2014, he doled out another clue: letters 70 to 74 spell “CLOCK.”

It’s been a year since the second clue was given—and 25 years since Kryptos was unveiled—and, still, even the CIA has yet to crack the code that sits on its grounds. (Or, at least as far as we know. They kept their solutions to the first three ciphers secret!)

The cherry on top of this most mysterious of artworks? Solving the final cipher isn’t the end of the puzzle: the code’s solution will complete a riddle, which will then also need to be cracked.

If you want to try your hand at being the one to solve the final 97 letters, the full transcript of the sculpture is online here, along with many other facts about the work, compiled by Elonka.