How does the presence of mistakes/misspellings prove that they are intentional?
I don’t think the letter E and the letter F are as easily mistaken as you state, nor do I think the other symbols are as easily and frequently confused as to lead to so many encipherment or transcription errors.
I’m not claiming the number of spelling errors is absolute proof of anything. But I am ssaying for me that one or two, or even three, spelling errors would be more believable as encipherment or transcription errors. When you’re talking about 10 spelling errors to me that makes it lean more towards intentional.
Also the Zodiac letters themselves are filled with spelling errors. I don’t know if this topic has been previously discussed at this forum . But I’ve seen analysis of it that notes how many words of medium and even hard difficulty are spelled correctly by the Zodiac, but often simple words are spelled wrong, sometimes extremely wrong
The pattern of misspellings in the letters strikes me as very likely intentional. To me it speaks to the writer trying to disguise his education and to make himself seem dumber.
I think overall the Zodiac odiac comes across as fairly intelligent. Not only did he commit several murders and get away with it, he created codes that have defied the efforts of the FBI, police and amateurs to break them. His letters are otherwise articulate, intelligent and convey information in an organized fashion.
The presence of 10 spelling errors in The fairly short 408 code comes across to me as being that all or the majority were intentional spelling errors, designed to increase the difficulty of solution and/or disguise the education and literacy of the creator. Like almost every other element of the Zodiac odiac case, it could be debated, with some good points made on both sides.
That both Zodiac and Kaczynski likely created codes that used intentional spelling errors to increase difficulty of solution, and both sent letters to authorities that used intentional spelling errors to deceive about their education and literacy, they both created elaborate codes that could not be broken by the FBI, they both wrote letters to newspapers threatening to kill innocents unless their words were published in the paper. are just more examples of things they had in common.
Even to the point that they both replace a constant with a vowel. But I wouldn’t say those examples above are the most important similarities. Equally or more important is that both seem obsessed with couples, couples that were engaged in or about to engage in sexual activity and both exhibited a desire to kill such couples.
Zodiac by going to lovers lanes, stalking couples and attacking them. Kaczynski by noting in his diary that while on the U of M campus the sound of couples next door in the room to his making love drove him crazy, and he included couples and promiscuous men and women on his list of people that he really hated and thought that he could now really kill, in September of 1966.
Both left crossed lines inside circles at crime scenes, that also conveyed the information of the type of weapon used and took credit for previous crimes.
Of next importance I’d site the 26 words and even multi word phrases that both zodiac and Kaczynski used. And then I would say the items found in Ted’s cabin, which are exactly the items you would theorize would be found in Zodiac’s cabin: A handmade black hood with rectangular eye slits,. .22 Winchester Super X ammo, a weapon with a flashlight attached to the barrel, etc., and many of the other things that I have covered in a different topic thread.
MODERATOR
I don’t think the letter E and the letter F are as easily mistaken as you state
It’s odd to dismiss this so easily. If he was working from a first draft, he could have easily mis-transcribed it when making the final version to mail to the papers. People make all sorts of transcription errors when copying things.
Further, we don’t have access to his first draft, so we don’t know how much that E looked like an F. Maybe the bottom horizontal line of the E was fairly short compared to "normal" Es. And we don’t know how much attention to detail he really gives to these things.
The misspelling of "dangerous" is not the only one that can be explained by symbol confusion or transcription errors. "Thae" vs "that" could have been confusion between symbols H and N. Depending on how those symbols are written, it’s not hard to imagine mistaking them.
Some of the other misspellings are due to the triangle symbols (filled triangle, dotted triangle, and empty triangle). Either he didn’t pay too close attention when transcribing, or intentionally swapped them around.
"Sloi" vs "Slow" is due to using hollow triangle instead of "A". Again, "A" looks like a triangle.
So either he intentionally introduced these errors (and they happened to involve similarly-looking symbols), or they are genuine sloppy mistakes.
Both are possible but I lean more towards the latter since there is a pattern of confusion over similarly-looking symbols. Why were the mistakes limited to similar-looking symbols? Why not just pick symbols at random to change? I guess a mastermind like Kaczynski might think like that but honest mistakes are a simpler explanation IMO.
Why were the mistakes limited to similar-looking symbols? Why not just pick symbols at random to change? I guess a mastermind like Kaczynski might think like that but honest mistakes are a simpler explanation IMO.
Random symbols would look like intentional obfuscation, while look-alike symbols would easily make it look like somebody who didn’t know what they were doing created the cipher.
There are multiple instances of
this train of thought in Kaczynski’s journals
and the letters he mailed as FC.
(The following are from Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski by Chris Waits (Author), Dave Shors (Author))
He would even go so far as to make charts weighing the outcome of his deceptions…
In light of the solved Zodiac 340 being revealed to involve Period 19 and diagonal sequences, bumping this to note that Jelberg in 2018 made very interesting work showing strong similarities between the Zodiac 340 Period 19 and the Unabomber Code Period 19.
For those interested, go to page 1 of this thread and start with the first post by Jelberg. That first post contains much of the excellent work showing quite startling similarities between the Zodiac 340 and the Unabomber code. We now know that the Zodiac used Period 19 to encode the Zodiac 340, and Jelberg convincingly shows that Kaczynski used Period 19th to encode parts of the Unabomber code.
MODERATOR
In light of the solved Zodiac 340 being revealed to involve Period 19 and diagonal sequences, bumping this to note that Jelberg in 2018 made very interesting work showing strong similarities between the Zodiac 340 Period 19 and the Unabomber Code Period 19.
For those interested, go to page 1 of this thread and start with the first post by Jelberg. That first post contains much of the excellent work showing quite startling similarities between the Zodiac 340 and the Unabomber code. We now know that the Zodiac used Period 19 to encode the Zodiac 340, and Jelberg convincingly shows that Kaczynski used Period 19th to encode parts of the Unabomber code.
Is period 19 common for transposition?
You would need to ask Dave Oranchak, Jarvle, Sam or someone more knowledgeable about code methods. From what I understand, Period 19 would be one of hundreds of possible code techniques and does not in and of itself particularly well-known or often used.
Just off the top of my head, I can name three features that are in both the Zodiac and Unabomber codes that are fairly unique. Meaning that they are somewhat rare techniques and methods that you don’t often see in other codes.
First, both codes are heavily mathematical throughout the code. Including the feature that numbers must be added together to get the next step in the multi-step decoding process.
Second, they are multi-directional. Zodiac 340 seems to involve the directions of horizontal forward, horizontal backward and diagonal. The Unabomber code involves of the directions of horizontal forward, vertical and diagonal.
Third, each code is complex and seems to show that the creater is skilled, yet each has numerous spelling errors and errors in encipherment. Analysis tends to show that many if not most of the spelling errors and other errors are intentional to increase difficulty.
Many of the errors to increase difficulty are identical. For example, in both the Zodiac and Unabomber codes, the creator takes away a consonant that ends a word and instead puts a vowel at the end of that word. Both the Zodiac and Unabomber exchange consonants at the ends of words for the vowel the letter "e".
MODERATOR
You would need to ask Dave Oranchak, Jarvle, Sam or someone more knowledgeable about code methods. From what I understand, Period 19 would be one of hundreds of possible code techniques and does not in and of itself particularly well-known or often used.
Just off the top of my head, I can name three features that are in both the Zodiac and Unabomber codes that are fairly unique. Meaning that they are somewhat rare techniques and methods that you don’t often see in other codes.
First, both codes are heavily mathematical throughout the code. Including the feature that numbers must be added together to get the next step in the multi-step decoding process.
Second, they are multi-directional. Zodiac 340 seems to involve the directions of horizontal forward, horizontal backward and diagonal. The Unabomber code involves of the directions of horizontal forward, vertical and diagonal.
Third, each code is complex and seems to show that the creater is skilled, yet each has numerous spelling errors and errors in encipherment. Analysis tends to show that many if not most of the spelling errors and other errors are intentional to increase difficulty.
Many of the errors to increase difficulty are identical. For example, in both the Zodiac and Unabomber codes, the creator takes away a consonant that ends a word and instead puts a vowel at the end of that word. Both the Zodiac and Unabomber exchange consonants at the ends of words for the vowel the letter "e".
Thanks. Ted’s long been the most interesting suspect to me.
With the 340, where did numbers need to be added together?
This thread will be open specifically for discussion of Jelberg’s work, the Nash theory and the Fibonacci sequence.
Let’s have general discussion on the similarities between the Zodiac and Unabomber Codes in that thread.
MODERATOR
Jelberg: Just an observation.
Notice any similarities?
340 Period 19 normal/mirror
enlarge
Matrix for Kaczynski’s "Code #1"
Same pattern but with some type of cycling Fibonacci pattern.
enlarge
Nash Equilibrium applied to poker and other games generates the same type of pattern…
*edit*
more to the pattern…
two on right = left (except @ the arrow?)
The 80 (with the strangely bold 8) that doesn’t follow the sequence,
directly splits the diagonal row into two length 15 halves.
It is also 15 squares in from the lower left corner.
MODERATOR
Same pattern but with some type of cycling Fibonacci pattern.
Hi Jelberg,
Those sequences you discovered were very interesting! I explored them quite a bit for my new video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aqx67s19mA
The bottom half of the grid is loaded with such sequences (see attached).
Thanks for your discoveries!
