Interesting….i started that thread. From what I have found, every single character Z used in his ciphers is a brand. So, from your infinite knowledge on the case please tell me what the ciphers say, or even link me to anyone else that has been able to find every character used in his ciphers in any fashion.

Sorry, but I have put considerable research into finding where the cipher characters came from and have no doubt they are brands.

While I am sure you are some respected Z researcher in some way, to act as if the brand finding is nothing tells me you are either stuck on your own theory with blinders or are of an ignorant mindset that is unable to think outside the box.

And no….nowhere in my thread did I say a cipher read Cow, cow, cow, cow. I stated that Z used livestock brands for his ciphers since there are thousands of them and without his personal brand book we will likely never decipher his codes.

Vesa,

I wasn’t going to do to this just yet but I really think I have reached my limit.

I can tell you that the cipher symbols, as well as the symbol with 4 dots" are no more "cattle brands" than I am the missing Jimmy Hoffa. He is much older, far more unattractive and of the male species for me to be him and thus the symbols to be "cattle brands".

I know that you asked Smithy to provide you with a link that shows "anyone else that has been able to find every character used in his ciphers in any fashion", but, I think I would like to take the helm on this. I really do not like your level of arrogance and the way that you talk to people. No one here deserves your attitude.

Now I am not at my personal computer and so I cant just copy and paste. I could just simply tell you but, then again, seeing is believing. I have identified what i feel is 26 of 30 "unique" cipher symbols. A couple (something like two or three) are, admittedly, debatable. But the rest are there with no doubts about it. I will do my best to post this information before the end of the day but dont be surprised if it takes until this time tomorrow. I will provide you with the publication number concerning each one so that you can see for yourself. No need to stress yourself about having to view 26 different locations because there are approximately only 5 pages to view and all from one source.

And by the way, you may or may not have said "cow, cow, cow" but it was pretty darn funny.

Soze

My attitude? Not seeing any attitude, but can say there was a reaction to a snide comment(s) made about a thread I started.

I would love to hear how you know, without a doubt, that these are NOT livestock brands. I guess I will have to wait until you post where the symbols actually came from though.

maybe let’s look at it a different way – supposing they are livestock brands, how does that help us find the killer? we can’t extrapolate that he was a ranch hand or cattle baron based on the idea that maybe he used a book of cattle brands for his symbols. we can’t compile a list of people who own cattle brand books as there’s no way of knowing that information. certainly there would be a small coincidence in the cowboy type comic book and an interest in cattle herding, but for all the arguing about it i don’t see how it helps other than being another strange zodiac fact or coincidence.

maybe let’s look at it a different way – supposing they are livestock brands, how does that help us find the killer? we can’t extrapolate that he was a ranch hand or cattle baron based on the idea that maybe he used a book of cattle brands for his symbols. we can’t compile a list of people who own cattle brand books as there’s no way of knowing that information. certainly there would be a small coincidence in the cowboy type comic book and an interest in cattle herding, but for all the arguing about it i don’t see how it helps other than being another strange zodiac fact or coincidence.

Every little bit helps in my opinion. If someone has a POI or a connection to certain things then you can narrow them down based on those connections. Ranches often kept records of any ranch hands that worked their ranch because cattle rustling was a big issue back in the day so they wanted to make sure they had a record of who was on the ranch. If a connection can me made to certain ranches where these brands came from to an individual, or even 20-30 individuals, that narrows the connection pool down considerably. There are plenty of other things about the case that point me in the direction of Z having been involved in ranching/ranches in some manner, so to me this is no stretch. Livestock brands lend themselves perfectly to being a cipher….there are thousands of symbols, multiple ways to read them, and it is a language of its own that, unless you were involved in ranching and happened to be keeping up with the Z case, nobody would have understood or picked up on it at the time.

Sorry – "cow cow cow" was my snide remark, meant to amuse (as well as make a point, I suppose) at the time.
Forgive me, I have skin like, uh, cowhide. I dropped that remark and then went off whistling, I didn’t realise it would be so exciting in this thread, subsequently.

To see if I can explain in a more adult way….
If one could map all the symbols in, say, the 340, to a list of brands, that’d be great. It would tell you a little something, perhaps.
In the same way that John Laffin’s book "Codes and Ciphers" contains "The Zodiac Alphabet" list of symbols – some of which "match", though, you’d need to be very objective. Not at all Graysmith-like then, fooling yourself that it was completely inclusive.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eegelko/1310307794/

But still – even with a splendid and preferably single source for your symbols – the symbols in the 340 (and the others) are enciphered text. That’s what we’re looking at. Plain text which has been "encoded" – – – – replaced by symbols.
It ain’t likely that they are meant to be "read" the way they’re presented, then.
If they were – they would not be a cipher, in any sense of the word.
All this is a given, right?

So the fact is that whatever the symbols are in the 340 and wherever they were sourced, that’s entirely irrelevant to being able to solve it.
It’s interesting, maybe, but that’s it.

To a wider point – how interesting?
Does believing that the cipher writer was familiar with cattle brands help? Maybe.
But did he (the encipherer) have to do anything other than open a book (or books) to find cattle brands to use as symbols – if that’s indeed what they are?
No, I’d suggest that he did not.
He didn’t need to be a cowhand or a rancher. (Or branded. Sorry.)

In order to disguise his handwriting with known techniques, he needed to have read a book on handwriting disguise, or two. Which he definitely did.
In order to use symbols in his ciphers he needed to invent some, maybe, and to find others in several books. Which it seems he probably did.
In order to avail himself of facts to pretend influence on a crime (like the abduction of Kathleen Johns) he needed to read the newspapers, avidly. He did.

Uh, that’s it. In my opinion, of course. Only.
Posts may contain traces of nuts.

I think vasa is saying that discovery of a brand book would be a sort of "rosetta stone" for the unsolved cryptograms, especially if it turns out that each brand symbol represents an unusual way of enciphering the text. For example, as vasa suggested, each symbol could represent a variable number of plaintext letters depending on what the brand book says for each symbol. If the cipher is indeed enciphered that way, I don’t know if traditional codebreaking methods would have discovered the solution, since they tend to assume 1 symbol equals 1 plaintext letter rather than a chunk of two or more plaintext letters.

Even without a brand book as the "key", this idea could be tested by creating test ciphers that use symbols that assign to variable numbers of plaintext letters. If the resulting test ciphers exhibit the same statistics as the actual 340, then it’s possible Zodiac enciphered in this way.

I think vasa is saying that discovery of a brand book would be a sort of "rosetta stone" for the unsolved cryptograms, especially if it turns out that each brand symbol represents an unusual way of enciphering the text. For example, as vasa suggested, each symbol could represent a variable number of plaintext letters depending on what the brand book says for each symbol. If the cipher is indeed enciphered that way, I don’t know if traditional codebreaking methods would have discovered the solution, since they tend to assume 1 symbol equals 1 plaintext letter rather than a chunk of two or more plaintext letters.

Even without a brand book as the "key", this idea could be tested by creating test ciphers that use symbols that assign to variable numbers of plaintext letters. If the resulting test ciphers exhibit the same statistics as the actual 340, then it’s possible Zodiac enciphered in this way.

Exactly what I am saying but in a much more concise way and to the point.

What Dave said.

Hrm, I wish that this discussion could be moved over to vasa croe’s original thread, where it belongs, instead of here on Tahoe27’s thread, where it does not. Oh well, if wishes were horses. Or cows.

-glurk

What glurk said.

maybe let’s look at it a different way – supposing they are livestock brands, how does that help us find the killer? we can’t extrapolate that he was a ranch hand or cattle baron based on the idea that maybe he used a book of cattle brands for his symbols. we can’t compile a list of people who own cattle brand books as there’s no way of knowing that information. certainly there would be a small coincidence in the cowboy type comic book and an interest in cattle herding, but for all the arguing about it i don’t see how it helps other than being another strange zodiac fact or coincidence.

Every little bit helps in my opinion. If someone has a POI or a connection to certain things then you can narrow them down based on those connections. Ranches often kept records of any ranch hands that worked their ranch because cattle rustling was a big issue back in the day so they wanted to make sure they had a record of who was on the ranch. If a connection can me made to certain ranches where these brands came from to an individual, or even 20-30 individuals, that narrows the connection pool down considerably. There are plenty of other things about the case that point me in the direction of Z having been involved in ranching/ranches in some manner, so to me this is no stretch. Livestock brands lend themselves perfectly to being a cipher….there are thousands of symbols, multiple ways to read them, and it is a language of its own that, unless you were involved in ranching and happened to be keeping up with the Z case, nobody would have understood or picked up on it at the time.

But how solid of a line does that draw between a POI and the truth? Think of it- so you have a pool of suspects that have picked over, and you have a couple that worked on ranches- not hard to believe, as there were a number of ranches up in Northern California at one time, probably far fewer now- what does that do? It adds to the jewelry surrounding the suspect, but it isn’t truth. Drawing a causal line between brands and a suspect seems like a far more slippery slope than focusing on something like a specialized knowledge of surveying, which is fairly demonstrable in the letters. This guy could have been a guy who rode a horse one time, found a brand book in a ditch. It takes no specialized knowledge to copy symbols from a book. But most people aren’t going to take the time to learn some surveying concepts from a book if they HAVE NO INTEREST. Think about it-most people hate math. Surveying can be a quite clunky subject, and you need to understand magnetic declination and trig and radians and so on. He clearly understood this from his 66 map. To me, that is a far clearer line to draw between suspects and information, than symbols or their usage in this case. Its CERTAINLY worth looking into, but it could be dangerous if you give it a false gravity.

I think vasa is saying that discovery of a brand book would be a sort of "rosetta stone" …. each symbol could represent a variable number of plaintext letters depending on what the brand book says for each symbol.

Yes, I understand the premise, who could not? It’s just that I’m sarcastic. I can’t help myself. I don’t believe each symbol in the 340 represents a string of "readable" "other" items (for want of a better word.) Brands, weather symbols, or any other "readable" collection. But I’m wrong a lot. *shrug*
Is there a list of all the brands each of the symbols in the 340 represents someplace then?
That would be a start to making me one of the converts.
Trav – wanna move this stuff? Cheer glurk up? Can if you like, I shan’t mind.

Imo Z was very aware of brands and symbols of all kinds and used a variety of them along with regular alphabetical letters, mathematical symbols, astrological, cars, etc.

He very well could have used a brand book but imo he did not use only that to construct his codes and ciphers.

I agree…most likely the Zodiac encountered this at some point, and used it as part of his "thing".

Same structure, same twelve sections, same as the astrological zodiacal division.

Zodiac to The Zodiac was clearly a "wheel of death".

Just clarifying, G. If not for that image of the Wheel of Death showing the four chosen methods of Z (at least for that one particular communication), I would honestly probably write this off to Zynchronicity. Personally, I don’t imagine Z sitting down with a copy of this 18 year-old comic to use as a template in creating the Halloween card. I imagine it more as something that was possibly burnt into his imagination, perhaps as an adolescent fantasy in reading this type of comic book, but I just think that the similarity to the astrological Zodiac wheel would be an added attraction.

That or it’s a coincidence…you get enough media going for enough years and you find connections everywhere, just like if there are billions of people on the planet, a great deal of them will resemble one another, or exhibit similar handwriting.

Certainly though, the BY aspect and the fact the cover death wheel greatly mimics the Halloween card lends great credence to the idea The Zodiac was inspired by this comic book in some way. Perhaps it was, as you said, burned into his imagination during his adolescence. Something he remembered from something he read once upon a time. Which means then that in all likelihood pretty much everything else he did with respect to his crimes and "activity" has a movie/comic book/play counterpart, such as "collecting slaves in paradice", or the nonsense of the Confession Letter.

One might start deeply researching comic books of the same era to see what turns up. For all we know, the key to most of his communications are located in some obscure comic book.

JMO.

*

Inside…

You never did explain how you came upon this little discovery, Tahoe. Would you be so kind as to explain the nature of the method you used to locate this particular comic? Was it a matter of chance, Internet searching, mental deduction, or some other methodology? Your revelations would greatly aid the rest of us in our searches for similar.

Thanks.