Another comment on the LL issue…if correct, this leads us to the conclusiont that the ‘O’ symbol must be a vowel..almost no words with consonants directly before LL do exist (owllike, bowllike, idyllic, that’s it moreless..tried those, all dead ends in the cipher).

pO++
+AJ+Op

in the cipher structure, with ‘+’ potentially being ‘L’ and ‘O’ being a vowel, therefore ‘A’, ‘E’, ‘I’, ‘O’ or ‘U’.

An example could be the word combination

PILL (row 4)
LOLLIPOP (row 10)
CALLCENTER (row 17/18)

QT

Another comment on the LL issue…if correct, this leads us to the conclusiont that the ‘O’ symbol must be a vowel..almost no words with consonants directly before LL do exist (owllike, bowllike, idyllic, that’s it moreless..tried those, all dead ends in the cipher).

pO++
+AJ+Op

in the cipher structure, with ‘+’ potentially being ‘L’ and ‘O’ being a vowel, therefore ‘A’, ‘E’, ‘I’, ‘O’ or ‘U’.

An example could be the word combination

PILL (row 4)
LOLLIPOP (row 10)
CALLCENTER (row 17/18)

QT

I agree, any symbol appearing before ++(LL) is very likely to be a vowel. Can we also say that the symbol – S – appearing before 99(EE) is likely to be a consonant?

So I also think at least two other parts of the Graysmith attempt are probably correct – the end of the 3rd line and 4th line SEE A NAME – here is what you get plugging those in. If you try that, then I think the 9th line could be A KILLLER OF, 4th line SEE A NAME _ _ EOLL _ _ _, 17th/18th line HELL.

‘pp’ or ’99’ could still be something else than EE…such as dd, nn, rr, ss etc..so it is not that easy, but could be.

QT

‘pp’ or ’99’ could still be something else than EE…such as dd, nn, rr, ss etc..so it is not that easy, but could be.

QT

Sure. I am exploring possibilities.

In the 408 code an E=E and a backwards R=R, so that may provide a reason to at least try S=S.

Also in the 408 code 9=E.

This is the fourth line of the unsolved 340 and beneath it is the fourth line of the proposed solution.

As Doranchak noted at http://www.zodiackillerciphers.com , a recent study by code expert Professor Knight at USC showed that unlike the 408 which shows a strong tendency towards traditional left to right bigrams, the 340 shows no particular bias, in fact there are more bigrams in a north east diagonal read. This could possibly mean encoded words appear left to right, diagonally and vertically.

In the Graysmith-Kite-Wilks proposed solution to the 340 there are words that appear in a northeast diagonal read, like LIST and BOMBS, and vertically, like DUEL, BARS, LEASH.

I think after this I will start a separate post on my theories and possible solves of the 340, but as I mentioned possible diagonal and vertical word finds in the 340 above, here are some vertical word finds discovered in the Zodiac 408 by Doug Oswell, Zander Kite and myself. Of course all of these could be random white noise.

BUT…they do all occur in a fairly concentrated area on or near the word PARADICE, most between six lines and between columns 5 and 13. These include TED, TEASE, HEAL, EARN. And the Halloween Card introduces the idea of PARADICE intersecting vertically with a horizontal SLAVES. Here PARADICE is intersected vertically by several words.

Several also have a nautical theme – WAVE, TIDE, BELL. (Bells were used on early light houses, rocks and buoys to warn ships). Doug Oswell noted a short story by Frederick Marryat called "The Legend of Bell Rock" that had all three elements in the key concluding page, featuring a man who could not earn enough money to win the hand of his love and dies because of the absence of a warning bell on an ocean rock and the woman who loved him "plunging into the wave" at tide.

Similar to the Mikado line quoted by Zodiac, "he plunged into the billowy wave" and the Zodiac line "help me I’m drownding". And all of these remind of the short story "Ship of Fools" written by Ted K, concerning a ship sinking and everyone drowning.

Ok, I’d like to continue my approach that ‘+’ presumably is equal to ‘L’. If we trust in that, there is an anomally: In the first half of the cipher, there is a digraph which we should have a closer look at: ‘M+’.

So it might be assumed that this digraph, ending with the letter ‘L’ is a frequent digraph overall. If we have a look at the most frequent digraphs, there appears to be one – ending with L – occuring more often than others: The digraph ‘AL’. We also do realize the reversed ‘P’ that appears quite often and close, also as a double letter.

http://kf7ekb.com/morse-code-cw/learnin … and-words/

After completing the digraphs only, we find ‘AL?L’ as a potentially complete word. This word could be e.g. ‘BALDLY’ or ‘CALMLY’. Now I continue to guess and chose ‘calmly’ as the potential word.

Continue..

We then find again the possibility to complete M?????LL which still may be completed in other ways. But I choose ‘MISSPELL’ as my favorite, to see what will happen on the top of the cipher.

We then get – assuming all ‘L’ represented by ‘+’ only – the word ‘SALTY’ out of setting ‘L’ (statistical favorite) and ‘A’ (most frequent digraph ending with ‘L’) plus the combination of two other words.

This ‘SALTY’ is just one hit, but it shows that such a way could be correct. I’ll continue with it..not enough, I’d like to continue with the following sequence starting with the letter ‘C’ and ending with the letters ‘TL’. If one word, about five different words are possible at least, but all of them seem to end with ‘Y’.

If we now look up at the first double ‘LL’, the Y shows up again – leading to a quite common ending of a word ‘LLY’..with some more combinations such as USEFULLY, BOASTFULLY, STRESSFULLY etc..nothing solid yet, I know, but it could be an approach..

QT

Overall I end up with at least six words, with the rest of the cipher still working somehow. BTW, depending on which word is chosen, the reversed ‘P’ in 90% ends up with ‘NN’, ‘FF’ or ‘RR’, all solid double letter combinations (not like e.g. KK).

QT

Just a cuple of thoughts from a cipher solver ignorant:)

The "all"…could it be the wording Zodiac loved to use; "shall /I shall/you shall/ they shall"?

And if the ending of the message ends with "L", I wonder if it should be "see you in hell"

In the possible Zodiac letter Postmarked: May 2, 1978
Sent to: KHJ-TV, Los Angeles, Calif. Property of the Los Angeles Police Department.
the writer end the letter "see you in the news"
( so far this letter is probably not authenticated, however TV has it listed with all the authenticated letters on his website zodiackiller.com )

? what is the thinking here on RG’s solution of the 340 cypher ? any credability?

by ace ventura » Mon Sep 23, 2013 2:29 pm

? what is the thinking here on RG’s solution of the 340 cypher ? any credability?

As attempts go, I think it’s a very good effort and he probably deserves some credit on that score. That said, it’s not even there as he outlined and simply, not correct.

? what is the thinking here on RG’s solution of the 340 cypher ? any credability?

I think the majority of Z researchers do not give much credence to the Graysmith proposed solution. I am in the minority of researchers who do think it has some merit.

QT – Graysmith also solves ++ as LL. You are speculating that prior to the LL we have an A, as in Z words like BALL, SHALL and ALL. Graysmith has some of the letters prior to LL as I, as in KILL, THRILL, WILL, PILL.

Wier – What Graysmith presents as his final stage solution to the 340 has IMO been rightly dismissed by most. It has a garbled confused feel, with baby talk langauge, forced word solves and incoherent meaning. "BLAST THESE LIES PARDON ME BULLSHIT PILLS GAME PHONE LAKE", etc.

A group of researchers back on the old ZK board, led by Ed, Kite, Claston, Obiwan, Sean and some others, put together an excellent version of what the Graysmith actual first stage solution likely was before he started in on the forced word solves and made up phrases.

That first stage RAW solution is IMO largely correct. What Graysmith did not know was that parts of his first stage solution must be subjected to a second phase of Caesar shifts of 0-3-6-9, that some words appear diagonally, vertically and backwards (LIST BOMBS DUEL LEASH BARS GAME) and that there is at least one other stage that nobody has yet figured out!

But IMO his first stage solution is largely correct, or at least partially correct, and provides the best starting point to actually solve the 340 cipher.

You can see my thoughts and work on the RAW Graysmith 340 here:

viewtopic.php?f=81&t=260

And more advanced and POI specific work here: http://unazod.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f … &start=150

Ok, I’d like to continue with the 340..after some hours, I figured out a solid cipher structure in it (assuming homophone cipher such as 408).

In some ‘areas’ of the cipher, the frequency of certain symbols is higher than in others. This leads to an opportunity to ‘backtest’ potential solutions (trial and error). The more identical symbols are present in a certain cipher part, the better, as the backtesting becomes easier and parts of clear text will get readable.

I therefore would suggest to identify cipher areas with length of e.g. 4 symbols or more to test them against each other.

Now where are those areas? I showed it with two graphics, with the first one just being a simplified variant of the second one:

The second one includes more ‘connections’ between cipher text parts..

To ‘test’ line 8 against line 19 appears to be the best approach to finally crack the hardest part of this cipher, figuring out a first step of starting to solve it.

Further assumptions that may be done to try cracking it:

1. ‘+’ being the letter ‘L’ (as described previously)
2. All letters before ‘++’ are vowels
3. Guessing: The ‘+’/’L’s of line 8 belong to one word only

Assuming this, we end up with approx. 1,400 words matching the two Ls (eg. ‘slightly’) and therefore defining a group of letter combinations of the ‘square’ symbol as well as the ‘Y’ symbol.

In combination with rule number 2 and the fact that the ‘B’ symbol could be any of the 26 alphabetical letters, we get a crucial amount of potential clear text phrases for the cipher area in line 19.

Goal is to find two potential clear texts matching both cipher structures, the one in line 8 as well as the one in line 19. And, respectively, using vowels for those symbols that appear directly before a ‘++’ double letter.

We end up with approximately 39,000 potential clear text phrases for the cipher area in line 19, e.g. the text ‘ORADAR’ ‘ARAZOR’ or ‘EMADAM’, with the words radar, razor or madam in it. Now we can backtest with line 8: We end up with OLA_Z_L as a potential clear text phrase for line 8. ‘TO LAY ZILCH’ would match this phrase (successful backtest), however may be ruled out as it does not make much sense.

Point is that those 39,000 clear text phrases are imo very good because until today I never had a ‘readable’ amount of potential clear text phrases..often this amount is from 2m to 200k, even in the edgar elgar cipher I ended up with at least 285,000 possibilites…all to read, select, define and backtest to figure out if the rest of the cipher is a match.

39,000 is about 780 pages of six-letter clear text phrases such as VEMANE to figure out e.g. ‘have man ever’. Until now I have read about one third of it, those are the best combinations of clear text between line 19 and line 8 I have found so far (based on assumptions above, luckily most of the 39,000 text phrases are not English language):

line 19 line 8
DREADFUL TOTALLYNORMAL
SEEMTOE SCHOOLMATE
DEFINE RELIANTLY
MYNAME ANOMALY
ENDRUN W/COULD

I guess with symbol ‘B’ = T there will be some more, but it’ll take its time. Here you go with an example:

QT

I don’t think the 9=B.

I say one other possible translation worth exploring could be S99=SEE.

In the 408 code an E=E and a backwards R=R, so that may provide a reason to at least try S=S.

Also in the 408 code 9=E.

This is the fourth line of the unsolved 340 and beneath it is the fourth line of the proposed solution.

So I also think at least two other parts of the Graysmith attempt are probably correct – the end of the 3rd line and 4th line SEE A NAME – here is what you get plugging those in.

If this is correct then the 8th line could read THESE FOOLSHALL SEE or THESE FOOLS WILL SEE or some similar variation. It ties into the 4th line SEE and the subsequent MY NAME IS letter and code.