Hey akias007,

Welcome to the forum.

Your proposed solution is: Hoot at the Halloween. Circle the words to seeh the helot hell rwaiting chaptr. Plus some other words popping up here and there.

I have to disagree that it is not the solution to the Z340 because of the following reasons:

– It is not impossible to make short phrases pop up in various sections of the Z340, and usually, the longer they go on the more corrupt (errors and syntax issues) they become. This is also true for your solution, the errors "seeh", "rwaiting", "chaptr" are all at the end. Solution was forced from left-to-right.

– Solution itself is unlike anything Zodiac has ever written. And what is the message here?

I propose that the zodiac just encrypted something like a standard word-search…

ie: he took a word search, put the ‘circle the words’ etc…message …and switched it up a little to include things like his name, ‘LEE’ all over.

I propose that the zodiac just encrypted something like a standard word-search…

ie: he took a word search, put the ‘circle the words’ etc…message …and switched it up a little to include things like his name, ‘LEE’ all over.

Okay so no meaning, roger. I like the idea of the Z340 being a word search and have proposed this idea myself many years ago and probably many other people have considered it.

The Z340 has very few repeats over short distances (sequential homophonic substitution) and that makes it easy to fit in short phrases and words here and there. For example, the first 2 rows have only 1 repeat. The longest sub string without repeats is 29 characters, that leaves us open to include a phrase of 29 letters of any structure. And thus, a short message such like your "circle the words" has no qualitative meaning as a solution attempt as it cannot be verified.

If the Z340 is a word search and if it has not enough words (not dense enough) then it may become impossible to verify its solution without travelling back in time and spying on Zodiac.

I may claim that the Z340 reads "NULLCIPHER" and that the rest is gibberish, but it is unverifiable.

That is just my opinion I guess. If you feel strongly about your solution proposal then do not let me deter you. You asked for our takes so here’s mine (all in friendliness).

Thx for your reply.

Well, I think he wanted to give his name, LEE…in the word-search. So that is part of the message.

I’m gonna go with the word search aspect. Because of the ‘circle the words’ and the way words are laid out…even on angles etc. I’ve thought he may have taken a Halloween word search and just re-worked it. Or maybe mixed a couple.

I should add, I didn’t start off thinking off it was a word search at all, but when i saw that message in front of me, I became quite sure it was.