Whoops. Yeah, missed that first time around.

The more I play around with the XOR patterns and permutations of row order/orientations, the less I think that these words are meaningful. It's a fairly unlikely coincidence, I admit, for "is" "the" & "keyfile" to appear, but those aren't particularly long words, with "keyfile" being the only exception.

But, perhaps more important--why would they use the term "keyfile" (or "key file") at all? The result wouldn't be a file, it would be a private key. I don't see the puzzle creators using a phrase like "keyfile" when "privkey" or even "key" would suffice, especially when "keyfile" is technically innacurate.

Not to mention generating this phrase requires a series convoluted steps:

1. Arrange 6 out of 8 rows in a pattern that doesn't appear anywhere else in the painting (to be fair, it may be undiscovered, but the bishop/knight explanation breaks down, for me. It's almost certainly a queen rather than a bishop, and the knight's movement is precise in a way that doesn't reflect the jumping around necessary for this row order/orientation)

2. XOR with 011010, but only after you skip the first bit entirely.

3. Cycle back to the beginning of the 6 rows and rinse/repeat.

What about the 011 pattern that tracks through all of the rows without deviation? Sure, it's possible to encode words and still have that pattern exist, but it's a hell of a lot harder, and--considering the route you have to take to generate the above phrase, seemingly unnecessary.

There are a lot of possible permutations, even between 6 out of 8 rows (upwards of 20,000). Maybe if "keyfile" made more sense to me, but I say it's just coincidence that these words exist here. Hell, look at how many scholars tried to prove Bacon was Shakespeare because they "found" his signature hidden in the texts. Everywhere. Those had equally convoluted rule-sets / approaches.