I have what may be a really dumb question, and since this thread is active I will throw it in here.

Could it decipher into a foreign language?

Interesting Tahoe. Doranchak mentioned above, that the assumption is that it is in English, but if not,there’s a monkey wrench.

Sorry! I completely missed that!!

Hello
I have tried to decipher in Spanish and Latin, the minimum increase my knowledge of these languages
greetings
Marcelo

The zdcrypto program I downloaded, designed by glurk and others, offers translation langauges of English, Italian, Spanish and German.

GLURK: So I agree with the points Dave has made. With the 340, something else is going on. What it is, I do not know. And I don’t mean to sound discouraging, but I don’t think that the approach here is going to work.

AK WILKS: I agree something else is going on. What I am thinking – hoping – is that perhaps parts of the 340, maybe the first 8 lines, solve as a more or less normal HSC, before that unknown "other step" is needed on those first 8 lines and the remaining 12.

GLURK: I don’t know if you have ever used ZKDecrypto, but one of the features it includes is the ability to "lock-in" certain chosen letters and let it solve around them.

AK WILKS: I downloaded ZKDecrypto and I am experimenting with it. Can you explain how to use that lock-in feature to pick certain letters and let it try to solve around them? How do I do that?

Also, would you give the following a shot as chosen letters and see what it can solve from there? I am sure you can do it better than I can. Can it look for more diagonal words (like the LIST, BOMBS here), backwards and vertical words? Can it implement a Caesar shift of 3? Or 6? 9? 12?

Though once you explain it to me I will not have to ask you to do that. Thanks!

Besides the TIT WILLOW, were there any words/phrases that Zodiac repeated,like TIT WILLOW,TIT WILLOW,TIT WILLOW???
Wondering if any patterns repeating in the cipher may be those same words.

Forgive me for asking, I know somebody sent me something before similar to what I am going to ask, but has anybody ever inverted the cipher, held it to a mirror,etc,and attempted a solve? Also, how about starting the cipher from the bottom right as a starting point,similar to how people write in arabic?

I personally can not see Zodiac making it so hard that it couldnt be solved,what purpose does it serve? He was a bragger that wanted people to read his notes, and hear what he had to say,it would serve no purpose.
Has anybody ever tried seeing if names of popular suspects fit anywhere? Such as ALLEN,etc.
Wondering if the name SAXBERG would fit anyplace in the cipher(6 symbols in a row not repeated)

Besides the TIT WILLOW, were there any words/phrases that Zodiac repeated,like TIT WILLOW,TIT WILLOW,TIT WILLOW???
Wondering if any patterns repeating in the cipher may be those same words.

Any repeat patterns in the cipher are a lot shorter, like two symbols (meaning it could be TH) or if you count twisties, three to five symbols. I always look for words Z was known to use, like KILL, SLAVES, PARADICE, GAME, BALL, etc., or words that I think he might have used, like STINE, KEYS, SHIRT, PARK, POLICE, etc.

I don’t like ‘twisties’ since Zodiac didn’t use them in his solved cipher.

Forgive me for asking, I know somebody sent me something before similar to what I am going to ask, but has anybody ever inverted the cipher, held it to a mirror,etc,and attempted a solve? Also, how about starting the cipher from the bottom right as a starting point,similar to how people write in arabic?

Hello Mr. Morf
Yes, I’ve been trying to "rearrange" the figure in many ways, symmetrically
Shaped clock in the form of letters Z alternate in transposition of columns (each column give the value of the dates on which the Z340 previous crimes were committed) but it is very laborious, changing all the symbols of the original Z340 block notes (ASCII), so far with poor results, I doubt I come to something, my bad english prevents me from seeing something. The exciting thing is that I have exercised and learned a lot. (Congratulations to Glurk and friends by Zcripto)
cheers Sr…

How about the dashes at the center of the cipher in 1st & last row? Maybe the cipher could be folded there, and each half a separate cipher? I started one from the very end backwards, and one from the start forwards, and so far, no real clashes of letters

My bottom part of cipher, working from the end,right to left looks like- NOOSLLIWENOYREVE

Forgive me for asking, I know somebody sent me something before similar to what I am going to ask, but has anybody ever inverted the cipher, held it to a mirror,etc,and attempted a solve? Also, how about starting the cipher from the bottom right as a starting point,similar to how people write in arabic?

I personally can not see Zodiac making it so hard that it couldnt be solved,what purpose does it serve? He was a bragger that wanted people to read his notes, and hear what he had to say,it would serve no purpose.
Has anybody ever tried seeing if names of popular suspects fit anywhere? Such as ALLEN,etc.
Wondering if the name SAXBERG would fit anyplace in the cipher(6 symbols in a row not repeated)

I’m pretty sure the mirror imaging and a lot of other approaches have been tried but I do think it’s a very worthwhile approach to try every conceivable method of reading the cipher and then feeding it into the ZKDekrypto. Backwards in a spiral, every 3rd or 4th line, every other letter, diagonal beginning in any of the 4 corners… there are about a gazillion ways that Z could have altered how the 340 was supposed to be read (while keeping the same simple substitution method) and none of them would require any great cipher knowledge or genius. A lucky random guess could just be the key to solving the damn thing.

Forgive me for asking, I know somebody sent me something before similar to what I am going to ask, but has anybody ever inverted the cipher, held it to a mirror,etc,and attempted a solve? Also, how about starting the cipher from the bottom right as a starting point,similar to how people write in arabic?

I personally can not see Zodiac making it so hard that it couldnt be solved,what purpose does it serve? He was a bragger that wanted people to read his notes, and hear what he had to say,it would serve no purpose.
Has anybody ever tried seeing if names of popular suspects fit anywhere? Such as ALLEN,etc.
Wondering if the name SAXBERG would fit anyplace in the cipher(6 symbols in a row not repeated)

I’m pretty sure the mirror imaging and a lot of other approaches have been tried but I do think it’s a very worthwhile approach to try every conceivable method of reading the cipher and then feeding it into the ZKDekrypto. Backwards in a spiral, every 3rd or 4th line, every other letter, diagonal beginning in any of the 4 corners… there are about a gazillion ways that Z could have altered how the 340 was supposed to be read (while keeping the same simple substitution method) and none of them would require any great cipher knowledge or genius. A lucky random guess could just be the key to solving the damn thing.

Glad I am not the one trying all that, I would go nuts

This is one of the examples I have tasted.

One more approach…as fas as frequency won’t work in homophone ciphers, the analysis of vowels and consonants may work and so might the analysis of digraphs.

M+

for example occurs three times, therefore might stand for AL or TH or something like that. But let’s do some digraph shuffling:

pO occurs in the cipher as well as Op does. So one might assume that this is a digraph which can be turned into both directions. Such as HT and TH. Our dear Scott Bryce made a list and are there other digraph frequencies around in the web. TH has a frequency of 1.52%, so an overall of ~5 such digraphs may be expected in the 340. pO does occur once, Op occurs twice in the cipher. Latter therefore might have a frequency of at least 2/340=0.58%, an average frequency for a digraph. However, not all of those average frequency digraphs are switchable into both directions.

Digraphs with a solid frequency (so to say e.g. not ‘CK’) AND having the characteristic of being switchable into both directions mostly could be:

ER – RE
ED – DE

while

HT – TH

is not very frequent, at least not the first variant of it.

Assuming that letters such as H, T, E, D, R might be quite common in the cipher – and therefore would be represented by more than one symbol – the frequency of 3 digraphs of Op (or pO) implies that there actually might be more (hidden) digraphs of the same letters in the cipher (hidden because other symbols might come into effect). I therefore’d guess that the digraph combination of Op and pO actually represents a digraph which is not only quite frequent (overall frequency of >3, possibly 5 or more) but also a digraph combination with letters that can be switched (and still representing a common digraph).

IMO ER-RE or ED-DE are the most likely digraphs with such characteristics. ER and ED, however, is more frequent than RE or DE. Therefore, if statistic is right, the more frequent combination of pO or Op may represent one of those digraphs (ER or ED).

Op is more frequent than pO, therefore Op may possibly stand for ER or ED. In both cases, the symbol O would therefore represent the letter E, a vowel. Although still speculative, we can continue: pO is present in a combination with the double symbol ++

pO++

and may we therefore (possibly) assume that a first cleartext letter is as follows:

pE++

with p=D or p=R.

The cleartext

DE++ might lead to solutions as the cleartext RE++:

Assuming that + is representing a letter for which no other homophones had been used, it could (still…) well present a letter such as G or M. A possible cleartext therefore could be:

REMM

which offers one possible solution:

REMMINGTON, which is a dead end not only because of its spelling error.

Overall these are thoughts, but to be aware of such switchable digraphs could make sense, especially if we continue to focus on the vowel/consonant distribution.

ES – SE

may also be an idea. With ES being more frequent than SE, ES might be represented by the symbols Op. pO++ therefore would mean

SE++

which could be interpreted as

SETT or
SELL

with the symbol O still representing the letter E, btw.

http://scottbryce.com/cryptograms/stats.htm

QT