hello to all, I live in france and this gentleman has not had the echoes that the team of D Oranchak has had. Only two articles have talked about it, one of which is a movie website. For my part I don’t believe it for a second. When he says that it took two weeks to crack the Z32 and an hour for the Z13, I think that sums it up pretty well. Since he doesn’t deliver his method and even cryptographic associations can’t validate his method, I think it says a lot about the seriousness of this discovery.

Yep! No actual media coverage, no scientific explanations whatsover…

There was a recent thread where a forum member found similar results. I was not convinced, but it had more merit than most of the crackpot attempts we’ve seen over the years.

Edit
I don’t read French, but it looks like the same guy. He’s posted his method in detail on this forum. It was good enough to receive a few postive comments. I felt it was lacking, but it was a damn good attempt.

Can you spot that thread, please?

viewtopic.php?f=81&t=5216

This is the topic.

I am not convinced either. Great effort for trying and being experimental/creative, but it seems very premature to claim he has cracked them both. I think he jumps to conclusions and there are so many steps to his "solution", that with other multi-layered steps I could come up with other results pointing to other names too.

Hi guys, that’s me, I am Faycal Ziraoui.

Very nice work Faycal !!!
I like the one that relates Tahoe and the hell hole ,
Anyway, let’s wait .
Marcelo

Thanks Marcello, on my side I have pleasure reading your explorations on the ciphers structure. For those who dont know about The Pines Card "Hell Hole" theory, you are referring to this topic: viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5201

I have to say, although you are not convinced replaceablehead and themikado90, I really appreciated your challenge . They showed me the weaknesses of the solution, and I have worked on thoses areas to reach a point where I am now condifent Z32 and Z13 are solved. Thanks.

More information to follow.

Which would also mean you solved the case!

As a non-crypto guy, my reaction is that Z did not believe his encryption of the 340 was all that difficult. He made a reference to a recent TV show and denied being the person who had called in, as if the code would be broken fairly quickly. Or at least that it would not take 50 years. To then use what he thought was a simple code to break (in HIS mind, at least) to encrypt other codes does not seem to make sense.

Mike

I have to say, although you are not convinced replaceablehead and themikado90, I really appreciated your challenge . They showed me the weaknesses of the solution, and I have worked on thoses areas to reach a point where I am now condifent Z32 and Z13 are solved.

Don and Bettye didn’t need to fiddle with the 408 because someone disagreed. So there’s that.

WHEN the solution is more cryptic than code

(Have to agree with Tom and Mike on this one)

You say that by applying the Z340 solution to the Z13 you come up with

D.E.E.A.?.A.?.O.?.?.E.D.O

This does not match your suspect Lawrence Kane. So you make several arbitrary choices, or deliberate choices, to get the suspect name you had in mind to start with. So you decide, on the basis of no evidence, to declare that Zodiac was using the Trifid code from 1902. You then apply numbers for letters, but M is not 13, it is 3. You then apply numbers as distant from Z, so the number sequence becomes

4.8.5.1.4..5.4.1..5.4.5 which you say produces the letter sequence

Y.X.Y.X.X.X.Z.Z.X.Y.Z.Z

Then I do not really follow what you do next, maybe apply the Trifid code from 1902 but in binary but in base 3, to somehow get

K..A..Y..R

Two of these are in the name Kane, the K and the A.

But three letters are in the name Kaczynski, the K the A and the Y. Two are in Arthur, the A and the R.

But you say Zodiac must have meant to say Kane, so you declare he made a "mistake" and meant to have it translate to KAYE.

You make several choices and decisions to arrive at something close to the suspect name.

By making slightly different choices, when you apply the Z 340 solution to the Z 13 you get the the original DEA?A?O??EDO result, for which you get KAYR. But one could get Theodore, which has EODOE from this original sequence. The original sequence has only the letter A in common with Kane, while it has five letters in common with Theodore. Solving the four "?"’s as T, H, R and K from the original application of the Z 340 solution to the Z 13 code, you would then get Theodore Ka.

With other choices one could get Allen, Gaikowski or any other name.

The same analysis, with different choices leads to you geographic coordinates pointing to South Lake Tahoe.

You say you submitted this code to experts, who all have PhD’s in Cryptanalysis, who you quote as approving of your work, but refuse to provide their names and positions.

Thanks AK Wilks for the feed back. However there are probably some misunderstandings. Please follow with me:

This does not match your suspect Lawrence Kane.

His name is Lawrence Kaye actually, legally.

So you make several arbitrary choices, or deliberate choices, to get the suspect name you had in mind to start with.

Actually I had no suspect in mind (easy to verify looking at my history on forums).
Those "arbitrary" choices are just the same choices used for Z32. "forcing" the same way two distinct ciphers is very unlikely to lead to consistent results.

You then apply numbers for letters, but M is not 13, it is 3.

Letters are converted to their alphabetical rank keeping only the unit in both ciphers

You then apply numbers as distant from Z, so the number sequence becomes

4.8.5.1.4..5.4.1..5.4.5 which you say produces the letter sequence

Y.X.Y.X.X.X.Z.Z.X.Y.Z.Z

This is wrong. After the NRZI variant ("distance"), you get 434333113411. The X, Y, Z syntax is just to be didactic when explaining.

Then I do not really follow what you do next, maybe apply the Trifid code from 1902 but in binary but in base 3, to somehow get

K..A..Y..R

I made a detailed post on the steps, feel free to read it again I would be pleased to explain again /differently if you do not understand.

Two of these are in the name Kane, the K and the A. But three letters are in the name Kaczynski, the K the A and the Y. Two are in Arthur, the a and the R.

His name is Kaye, not Kane, it’s actually his legal name. He also used Kay (Larry Kay) as an alias. 100% of Kay fits in the result. The "R" could be a filler, or a mistake.

But you say Zodiac must have meant to say Kane,

I’m not saying that.
Edit: actually I did. Just like you, I didn’t know at the time that Kaye was his legal name.

You make several choices and decisions to arrive at something close to the suspect name. By making slightly different choices, from the original DEA?A?O??EDO result, for which you get KAYR, one could get Theodore, which has EODOE from this original sequence. The original sequence has only the letter A in common with Kane, while it has five letters in common with Theodore. With other choices one could get Allen, Gaikowski or any other name.

I would be interrested to see this of course.

The same analysis, with different choices leads to you geographic coordinates pointing to South Lake Tahoe.

They are actually mostly the same choices.