Hi

I’m new here. I’m an artist / woodworker. Interested in true crime, and I think specifically, in how things are solved through studying physical materials. Thinking through things in a mechanical / procedural way. Have a fascination with math too, though I’m terrible at it.

Re-watched 2007 Zodiac a month ago and have since lost countless hours and much sleep to researching the crime and am now hopelessly hooked on 340.

Hmm… why not? – I’ll post a few of my very initial thoughts on it here.

1. I think it’s real (not gibberish) and solvable. (Though it could be a much more peculiar plaintext than 408)

2. I think he wanted 340 solved or was ambivalent. 408 revealed nothing – in fact he assumed it may be solved and denied us his identity. I think 340 is probably similar.

3. I don’t think he went from 408 homophonic sub cipher to some multidimensional transposition plus vigenere plus whatever. 340 is just a couple of months (?) after 408 and I think he made a couple of moves to make it harder, but not impossible. My guess – only a guess – is that he pulled out his old 408 key or stack of symbols, reused them, added some more, then confused things by making a few symbols polyalphabetic (like assigning + to a few letters) which I believe is the same as a "wildcard"?, maybe used some nulls, maybe "colored in" some symbols, and also made some mistakes etc. Then maybe transposed it… But I can’t see him doing much more than that.

4. I have read some fascinating things here about typography. I think studying the paper, the ink, the origins of the symbols, are there ruled lines, are there impressions on the paper, stains, etc would all be really helpful. He is not an amateur. He has an approach and a feel for the physical stuff, the materials. (I am biased but I find that a major theme in true crime is that police and lawyers do not understand the built environment, the natural environment, the physical nature of things around them – only the legal nature of things.)

5. I know he wrote the cipher in a grid. But why do we seem to think he wrote the key on a grid? Was it on a cipher wheel? Maybe one he turned everytime he needed a new symbol? – a childish but also complicated move.

6. Last thought for now… could any of the m15 or 19 periodic discoveries find a root in the physical world? His grid is 1/2" x 1/2". Did he write his message on a strip of 1/2" wide paper, then wrap it around a coffee can as a scytale? Can that produce the periodic peculiarities?

o.k. enough for now. Gotta go lead my life!

oh, p.s. if D. Oranchak reads this, thanks for your great videos! But I have a request- can you make a webtoy that has 340 to the left and a "key" you can fill in to the right that operates cyclically like a real key would? But allows for the + symbol (or any symbol) to be placed under multiple alphabet letters?

Thanks