Mike-
I made this comparison chart some years back. I believe it to be fairly accurate:

-glurk

Hi-

Thanks for that chart. The VTH and Examiner letters are essentially twins with minor variations, like "lyeing." The Chron letter is the odd man out. But is it signal or noise? That is the question!

Mike

Of course it was to become his paper of choice and probably was from the off, it’s the neatest and the one in which he was most "helpful". Puts me in mind of when he later wrote to Belli, taking care to print neatly. Seems to betray something, exactly what, I’m not entirely sure.

Maybe Z was only going to send it to one single paper (the Chron),and wrote it originally just to them, but realized he would get more attention if he wrote to the other two,and split the ciphers up into 3 sections,thus one that is very different then the others.

Hi-

I have been thinking just that all morning. The only thing that was bothering me is that he wrote the back of the Chronicle letter with the same thick pen he used for the front. I was imagining that had he decided a day or whatever later to add a second side to that letter, so as to describe his idea of breaking up the code in three, then why didn’t he use the same pen he was using to write the other two letters for the second side of the Chronicle letter? If he had misplaced the thick one after making his decision and only had the thin one he used on the VTH and Examiner letters, why didn’t he write the second side of the Chronicle letter with the thin one? Conversely, if he had both available to him, why didn’t he write the other two letters with the same pen he used for the Chronicle letter?

However, note that in the VTH and Examiner letters, the references to the cipher are on the FIRST page of each. In the Chron letter, he does not reference the cipher until the back of the letter. So that could have been an add-on idea after he had written the original Chron letter. I wonder if he originally planned to use the "O" in "Over" to make his symbol but changed gears after writing the letter and decided to include the cipher, so he just converted it to the word "Over."

A bit perplexing.

Mike

On balance I think there’s definitely an argument for the Chronicle letter to have been the first written. If the idea of splitting the code into three parts/writing 2 additional letters was an afterthought, I think the decision came pretty soon. If you look at the high resolution shots, there appears to be evidence that the pen was on the way out, so he probably had to change it. (yet he finished the letter with it and the envelope).I would also tend to believe (as the construction would have taken time and it being most important part of the exercise) the cipher was ready to go well before he got to the letters. It’s therefore hard to think that the Chronicle letter was originally planned to end after the first page, having not mentioned it.
Could very well be though that his original plan was to send just one letter.

I’ve always thought the fact that Z408, with its filler (as demonstrated by glurk) neatly divides by three indicates his intention was to involve all three newspapers from the get-go.
But I suppose that may just have been a happy coincidence.

Hi-

I have been thinking just that all morning. The only thing that was bothering me is that he wrote the back of the Chronicle letter with the same thick pen he used for the front. I was imagining that had he decided a day or whatever later to add a second side to that letter, so as to describe his idea of breaking up the code in three, then why didn’t he use the same pen he was using to write the other two letters for the second side of the Chronicle letter? If he had misplaced the thick one after making his decision and only had the thin one he used on the VTH and Examiner letters, why didn’t he write the second side of the Chronicle letter with the thin one? Conversely, if he had both available to him, why didn’t he write the other two letters with the same pen he used for the Chronicle letter?

However, note that in the VTH and Examiner letters, the references to the cipher are on the FIRST page of each. In the Chron letter, he does not reference the cipher until the back of the letter. So that could have been an add-on idea after he had written the original Chron letter. I wonder if he originally planned to use the "O" in "Over" to make his symbol but changed gears after writing the letter and decided to include the cipher, so he just converted it to the word "Over."

A bit perplexing.

Mike

The felt-tip ran out of ink. He kept trying to rejuvenate it…until finally it ran out.

viewtopic.php?f=50&t=213

What really confuses me is that the VTH letter says "2 parts have been mailed" and the other two SF letters say "2 parts are being mailed."

Logically, one would think he wrote and completed all 3, and mailed them all at the same time (?) I don’t know.

I can’t even guess at this, really, it makes my head hurt thinking about it.

-glurk

Hi-

I have been thinking just that all morning. The only thing that was bothering me is that he wrote the back of the Chronicle letter with the same thick pen he used for the front. I was imagining that had he decided a day or whatever later to add a second side to that letter, so as to describe his idea of breaking up the code in three, then why didn’t he use the same pen he was using to write the other two letters for the second side of the Chronicle letter? If he had misplaced the thick one after making his decision and only had the thin one he used on the VTH and Examiner letters, why didn’t he write the second side of the Chronicle letter with the thin one? Conversely, if he had both available to him, why didn’t he write the other two letters with the same pen he used for the Chronicle letter?

However, note that in the VTH and Examiner letters, the references to the cipher are on the FIRST page of each. In the Chron letter, he does not reference the cipher until the back of the letter. So that could have been an add-on idea after he had written the original Chron letter. I wonder if he originally planned to use the "O" in "Over" to make his symbol but changed gears after writing the letter and decided to include the cipher, so he just converted it to the word "Over."

A bit perplexing.

Mike

I apologize if others have suggested this interpretation already in this thread but I’m being lazy and these are my thoughts on this question.

Firstly I would be wary of pen thicknesses when it comes to the VTH letter. From my POV the VTH letter as we see it is a duplicate and as such it’s not accurately possible to compare pen thicknesses with the other two letters. In all likelihood what we see with the VTH letter may be close so we could guess but there’s a rounding and a blurring on the characters that suggest to me that we have copy bleed so we could be seeing a reduction of a thicker pen stroke through copying or a distortion of a thinner pen stroke or both.

A minor point maybe but pertinent if we use it to ascertain order.

As for the Over. I’m not an expert of the finer points of letter construction but it would seem to me that this defines a break in information flow. At least in this communication. So, since the initial information ends on page one there would be a need for the Over to be included as it could appear that the information ends at the bottom of the first page, This is not so with the other two letters which do not conclude so neatly at the bottom of the first page so you could then be compelled to turn the letter over and find the remainder.

This is almost a mute point though in practicality as it would be human nature to check the other side and there would be show-through, as we’ve seen evidence of. So, the purpose of the over is a splitting of information. It may be at this point, the completion of the second page of the first letter, that the show-through was evident in all it’s glory to the author, hence then lack of need to include such an instruction on the remaining letters.

That’s why I would think and agree with others, that the Chron letter was written first.

Also to corroborate this splitting of information, he actually draws a line on the other two letters to do just that. What the end of the page had accomplished in the first letter was later replaced by a dividing line due to the fore-shortening of the information on the page. Another reason to suspect that the Chron came first as it was more considered concerning use of space.

The Chron letter is the key he states it is the first of the three cipher’s being sent, it also states that this one in particular cipher has his identity in it. I ‘am working on a different approach to these ciphers. I don’t think they are as complex as he wanted people to think I believe the only message delivered in the three ciphers are in the first one and are his name or at least initials of his name and that the rest is just fodder for confusion used to hide his identity.

I think the letter and it’s author are telling the truth when it claims "In this Cipher is my Identity". I think the Cipher is one deliberately meant to obfuscate. The Cipher when decoded reveals a completely useless rant about slaves in an afterlife.
This is just my opinion but I think there is probably something pointing to his identity that is encoded with the decoded cipher itself, weather its a rail fence type Cipher message or Running Key type of encryption I have no idea as I am the completely useless when It comes to the ciphers and decoding them.

I think the letter and it’s author are telling the truth when it claims "In this Cipher is my Identity". I think the Cipher is one deliberately meant to obfuscate. The Cipher when decoded reveals a completely useless rant about slaves in an afterlife.
This is just my opinion but I think there is probably something pointing to his identity that is encoded with the decoded cipher itself, weather its a rail fence type Cipher message or Running Key type of encryption I have no idea as I am the completely useless when It comes to the ciphers and decoding them.

He said his IDENTITY is in the cipher,NOT his name. Maybe theres a clue in there?

I think the letter and it’s author are telling the truth when it claims "In this Cipher is my Identity". I think the Cipher is one deliberately meant to obfuscate. The Cipher when decoded reveals a completely useless rant about slaves in an afterlife.
This is just my opinion but I think there is probably something pointing to his identity that is encoded with the decoded cipher itself, weather its a rail fence type Cipher message or Running Key type of encryption I have no idea as I am completely useless when It comes to the Cipher’s and decoding them.

He said his IDENTITY is in the cipher,NOT his name. Maybe theres a clue in there?

That’s exactly what I thought. The wording is important.