I was at Zodiackiller.com and came across a thread regarding the semi colon on the back of the San Francisco Examiner envelope. The basic debate seemed to be why was it there? I don’t have an answer for it. However, there were some things that the semi colon seemed to have in common with other aspects. Below is what I wrote at ZodiacKiller.com:
Below are the three envelopes for the July 31, 1969 communications from the Zodiac. One thing I noticed about the envelopes is that there appears to be two different ways of writing. I have numbered them 1 and 2 to show, if not obvious, which envelopes are different in style. I have also showed the images in the order the cipher was written.
The R in rush sticks out to me the most but there appears differences in the shape of the P, the shape of the d and the lack of capitalization for the letter T in to. The semi colon is a part of this second style of writing, along with, the exclamation mark. The exclamation seems to start off the oddity and the semi colon seems to end it. Not sure why he or someone else would have done this.
Any thoughts on why there appears these differences?
Image above doesnt seem to load so adding it again.
The exclamation seems to start off the oddity and the semi colon seems to end it. Not sure why he or someone else would have done this.
Maybe they’re delimiters that mark the start and end of something?
Any thoughts on why there appears these differences?
As with most typos and oddities in these letters, the only explanation that makes sense to me is that they’re clues or artifacts of some kind of wordplay, encryption or steganography. Either way, we don’t understand it (yet).
The “sloppy” writing style also makes the letters ambiguous. For example, on the bottom envelope sent to the Examiner the semicolon could also be a tilted “i”, the “p” in “please” could be a “D” or parts of a “B”, the “u” in “Rush” is close to “a” and the “o” in “to” could possibly be a “c”. Other words can be formed because of this ambiguity (see the attached MS Paint monstrosity).
Looking at the left side of the text, the lines are split in a non-arbitrary way. It looks like someone drove an invisible wedge in between them. Maybe another piece of paper or masking tape was placed over the envelope so that parts of “P” and “E” were left out of the final text (we’re just assuming it says “Please” and “Editor”, right?). I may be overthinking it but it feels like the author is telling us that it’s a collage or jig-saw puzzle of some sort.
I meant to put this up a while ago concerning Zodiac and anything with dots and lines.
John Laffin’s book Codes and Ciphers seems to be the source the Zodiac may have used for both the Z340 and Z408. if you go forward to near the end you find the following.
Now I haven’t even begun to consider this in the context of Zodiac communications because I am up to my eyeballs in other matters but anyhow, there it is.
BTW, your folding stuff is not too far off the idea that maybe the Z13 is Alfred E. Neuman and Mad Magazine uses folding in a back page puzzle.
https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/12/16/zodiac-killers-z13-cipher-meets-z340-cipher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Fold-in
www.zodiachalloweencard.com has a 400 paged book for free containing the super solution with an overarching explanation of the cards and more.
The exclamation seems to start off the oddity and the semi colon seems to end it. Not sure why he or someone else would have done this.
Maybe they’re delimiters that mark the start and end of something?
Any thoughts on why there appears these differences?
As with most typos and oddities in these letters, the only explanation that makes sense to me is that they’re clues or artifacts of some kind of wordplay, encryption or steganography. Either way, we don’t understand it (yet).
The “sloppy” writing style also makes the letters ambiguous. For example, on the bottom envelope sent to the Examiner the semicolon could also be a tilted “i”, the “p” in “please” could be a “D” or parts of a “B”, the “u” in “Rush” is close to “a” and the “o” in “to” could possibly be a “c”. Other words can be formed because of this ambiguity (see the attached MS Paint monstrosity).
Looking at the left side of the text, the lines are split in a non-arbitrary way. It looks like someone drove an invisible wedge in between them. Maybe another piece of paper or masking tape was placed over the envelope so that parts of “P” and “E” were left out of the final text (we’re just assuming it says “Please” and “Editor”, right?). I may be overthinking it but it feels like the author is telling us that it’s a collage or jig-saw puzzle of some sort.
I agree with the word play, encryption or steganography. That’s definitely his kind of thing and I think there is definitely something to consider here. What, I don’t know. The phrase “please rush to editor” and, the way it was broken up, has a lot to do with how the 340 cipher was set up. Maybe it has something to do with that. Not sure I know what to make of the spacing between the exclamation and editor.
I’ve always thought that the please and editor were covered up by some stupid ass in le document control.
@BDHolland
I am certainly with you that Laffin’s book was the Zodiac’s choice of book but I am sure its not for the same reasons you may have.
What do you mean by the fold? I feel pretty certain that I have never stated that Alfred E. Neuman fit the Z13.
@BDHolland
I am certainly with you that Laffin’s book was the Zodiac’s choice of book but I am sure its not for the same reasons you may have.
What do you mean by the fold? I feel pretty certain that I have never stated that Alfred E. Neuman fit the Z13.
I go with the book because if the Z340 is the right solution then it’s a skytale cipher which happens to be the cipher method described before the Zodiac Alphabet Cipher.
When anything about folding Zodiac material comes up I point to this post https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/12/16/zodiac-killers-z13-cipher-meets-z340-cipher
What I can add to this is that MAD MAGAZINE always had a folding puzzle in the back pages.
I put up some links to it.
Have you seen the mechanism of this puzzle before?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTsN5daImNg
It usually slapstick comedy also.
www.zodiachalloweencard.com has a 400 paged book for free containing the super solution with an overarching explanation of the cards and more.
The exclamation seems to start off the oddity and the semi colon seems to end it. Not sure why he or someone else would have done this.
Any thoughts on why there appears these differences?
Thought about this a little more. I think an exclamation mark starts the weirdness and an “i”, not a semicolon, ends it. An exclamation mark is an upside-down “i”… The author is probably telling us that the text has meaning when read upside down as well.
When I flipped the envelopes, I noticed a little detail… In my previous post, I mentioned that it looked like someone drove a wedge into the left side of the sentence on the back of the last envelope. I think there are two such “wedges” and it’s the “V”s in the two “Vallejo”s (see attached please_rush2.png)
When flipped, the “j” in “Vallejo” becomes a question mark so maybe “Valle?” marks the end of a hidden question? Either way, I get the feeling that we need to combine the first and last envelope so the “V”s become the “wedges” or so the incomplete words are completed.
I now see your point regarding the semi colon. I am also now seeing what you are talking about in terms of the wedges to either side. I also see what your saying about the question marks. Would have to think about this.
John Laffin’s book Codes and Ciphers seems to be the source the Zodiac may have used for both the Z340 and Z408. if you go forward to near the end you find the following.
Very creative approaches! It’s amazing how small or abstract the ciphertext can get when the parties involved know the code. I hope that isn’t what we’re up against! ?
I now see your point regarding the semi colon. I am also now seeing what you are talking about in terms of the wedges to either side. I also see what your saying about the question marks. Would have to think about this.
Cool. Glad I’m not the only one who sees a possible clue. Those two “Vallejo”s on the first envelope never looked right to me – the “j”s look like “s”s – but I hadn’t thought about combining or rotating them until I saw all the envelopes together in this post. Just had another idea: ¡Maybe it is Spanish!
