You spend four weeks telling everyone about your super computer which "thinks like the Zodiac" and end up giving us half a solution based on someone "getting into the mind of the Zodiac". It gives the appearance they got nothing using the computer and had to come up with a rationale for why they came up dry. If there is a plus in all this it is that it re enforces (to my mind) that Zodiac was not an experienced cryptographer. If there is/was gibberish in 340 it may well be because Zodiac just ran out of ideas and didn’t want to repeat himself in any way which would reveal anything meaningful. The name wasn’t found because the name isn’t there.

The name wasn’t found because the name isn’t there.

Zodiac was never going to give his name.

IMO Kevin and Craig lost all credibility…I’ve seen much better "solutions". Very dissapointed with the code team, though I know Doranchak knows his stuff. (Admire your work/posts Dave)
Great DNA evidence though, With Stine’s blood on the gloves I guess we can assume the other DNA is the killers?

What I saw looked good, it seemed to fit the Zodiac’s style. I’d say it’s possible he did indeed solve part of it. Still a lot to be cracked though.

using that method you could make the first lines say anything you want. the rest is gibberish because it’s not correct.

With Stine’s blood on the gloves I guess we can assume the other DNA is the killers?

We can assume it’s someone other than Steins. Still possible they were just left in the cab by someone not involved. Stein’s blood could have splattered onto them. If they get enough DNA from the Bates case to work with, and it matches the Stein gloves DNA, then it’s whole new ballgame.

Here’s John Cecil’s solution which is much closer IMO. he at least starts out legit,with a method breaking the code into quadrants

by John Cecil
Blog Archive

Friday, December 5, 2008
340 cipher solution
This is what I came up with:

IWILLMAKETHISVERY
CLEARMYONEREASONI
AMKILLINGIFIDONTK
ILLIAMLIKELYTOOAB
ANDONMYCHANCETOCO
LLECTMYSLAVESFORT
HEAFTERLIFEEVENWH
ENIKNOWYOUCANTFIN
DMEIAMNOTSAFEWALK
INGIFIAMCOLLECTMY
SLAVESWHENSLAVESY
OUFOUNDSAVEDDEADI
NACARHECHANGEDHIS
MINDANDRAODFROMME
HEWALKEDBYWITHOUT
HIDINGFROMAENOTHI
NGISSAFEHEWASHID
INGAKNIFEYOUEVENL
ISTENEDTOOMYSLAVE
WASCALLINGFORHELP

"I will make this very clear. My one reason I am killing. If I don’t kill I am likely too abandon my chance to collect my slaves for the afterlife. Even when I know you can’t find me I am not safe walking if I am collect my slaves. When slaves you found saved dead in a car. He changed his mind and road form me. He walked by without hiding from me. Nothing was safe. He was hiding a knife. You even listened too my slave was calling for help."

This is a polyalphabetic substitution cipher, not a transposition cipher, which is why basic decryption programs that only have one letter substituted for a coded letter, are not compatible with this approach.

Another researcher and programmer pointed out that it has a 69%, one to one, accuracy rate. He said I could use this graphic he created to help illustrate the accuracy. In his email he explined.

"John,

I was playing around. I used your solution and made the assumption that each symbol would represent one letter in each quadrant. I used the first instance. Of course we know that Zodiac used multiple symbols to represent the same letter and also used symbols to represent multiple letters. By using the method I described, your solution proved 69% accurate.

Let me explain a little more in depth. If you go to the first quadrant (upper left), you will see that "R" occurs three times in the cipher. In your solution, "R" represents "I", "E", and "O" – in the first quadrant. In my test, it was only allowed to represent "I". I attached an image. When you look at the solution solved by quadrant and only using a single substitution method, it is impressive.

So far, this is by far the best solution I have seen. On an odd note, I found when you solve the entire cipher using your using the single substitution, it said something like, MAARYISASTINKINGWHORE," at the end. It had the name MIKE AVEY in the center. There is a military man from San Francisco named Mike Avey, but I haven’t looked at it much because the rest of the cipher was gibberish using this method.

Dann"

here’s his image I’d saved a while back.

using that method you could make the first lines say anything you want. the rest is gibberish because it’s not correct.

In fairness to the code guys it would be interesting if there was a solution which worked until half way through at a line break and then stopped producing words. What would the odds of that be.

So, by 1976, Nixon’s signature almost resembles a swastika!

I guess getting older burns one out so much we even get lazier writing our signatures.

I guess getting older burns one out so much we even get lazier writing our signatures.

It would appear that we also get so lazy that we resort to duplicating our signature in photoshop and making alterations to it that way. At least in the last three if the ‘less than subtle duplication marks are anything to go by’.

Am I wrong or is this a big fat swastika up there..?

QT