I’m sure this has been proposed before, but nevertheless – my two cents:
For my money Zodiac was a competent cipher maker – but not a brilliant one. I don’t think he was able to produce a truly complex cipher, with shifts, multiple keys, etc. I think the 340 is a basic substitution cipher, just like the first, cracked one. But there’s obviously a twist to it – if not, it would’ve been cracked too, years ago. My half-ass theory is this. The plain text of the 340 doesn’t contain a lengthy communication, just a short message. And I doubt very much this message is Zodac’s real name. It’s more likely a taunt of some kind. Here’s what he could have done (this is just an illustration – the number of letters/columns isn’t accurate):
Now, this is the most obvious way to do it. He probably came up with something trickier:
…or something trickier yet. But the formula is a simple one: bury the message in gibberish. The pattern could be anything, really – vertical, backwards, a zigzag pattern (the letters could even form a "Z"!), but the point is that this is something anyone could do – you don’t have to be a cipher specialist in order to create something tricky this way. Zodiac may even have based his pattern on something particular (the total number of letters may be significant – he could be using co-ordinates of some kind as the basis), something which made sense to him – but which doesn’t necessarily make sense to us.
Then again, the whole thing could be gibberish. But I don’t think it is. I don’t see him spending time on something like this, carefully drawing it up, if it’s just gibberish. I think he wanted to say something – a taunt or a joke of some kind.
Actually I think that is an interesting idea. I think he would enjoy playing a "prank" of sorts on the FBI and police, as he did with his bus threat. One way to do this is as you suggest, bury a short to medium message of some type within a lot of gibberish and white noise.
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THESE FOOLS SHALL SEE A NAME BELOW Something like that?
THESE FOOLS SHALL SEE A NAME BELOW Something like that?
It could be anything, really – it’s more about the method than the message itself. But my guess would be that the message is a taunt of some kind and not anything useful as far as learning his identity is concerned.
Nice theory, it is quite plausible!
https://zodiacode1933.blogspot.com/
Welcome, Norse. That’s certainly possible but unfortunately (for us) it would make the solution virtually impossible to confirm.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that OWK’s suggestion from the Graysmith solution is the point of the message:
THESE FOOLS SHALL SEE A NAME BELOW
First of all, it would take an extraordinarily lucky guess to choose which part of the cipher was the target message and how the substitution was supposed to take place. Since the same method would yield primarily gibberish (as Graysmith’s does for the most part) for the rest of the cipher you could say "Well, it’s supposed to be gibberish!" but the above solution is just one of an almost infinite number of possible partial solutions you could come up with using this method. It is the success of the method on the other parts and the cipher as a whole that generally shows whether an enciphering method and it’s resulting solution works. If Zodiac wanted to convey an actual message, this would have been a terrible means of conveying it.
Welcome, Norse. That’s certainly possible but unfortunately (for us) it would make the solution virtually impossible to confirm.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that OWK’s suggestion from the Graysmith solution is the point of the message:
THESE FOOLS SHALL SEE A NAME BELOW
First of all, it would take an extraordinarily lucky guess to choose which part of the cipher was the target message and how the substitution was supposed to take place. Since the same method would yield primarily gibberish (as Graysmith’s does for the most part) for the rest of the cipher you could say "Well, it’s supposed to be gibberish!" but the above solution is just one of an almost infinite number of possible partial solutions you could come up with using this method. It is the success of the method on the other parts and the cipher as a whole that generally shows whether an enciphering method and it’s resulting solution works. If Zodiac wanted to convey an actual message, this would have been a terrible means of conveying it.
Thanks for commenting!
Yes – I see your point. It is possible indeed to insert whatever message takes your fancy and declare the rest to be mere filler letters/noise. The message would have to be unmistakable – something undeniably Zodiac-ish:
GREETINGS FROM BERRYESSA I LOVE TAXICABS
or something.
If the substitution cipher is the same for both the unsolved ones, that would make things somewhat easier. Come up with something more or less plausible (like the Graysmith message) and see if the key fits the "my name is" sequence.
Yea I’ve wondered if the pivots and the "satellite" patterns around them maybe point to a kind of "crossword" situation…
The + symbols make me think of this too as well as the "box corners…
It’s clear zodiac had a fascination with cards, newspapers, grids, etc. He’s flipping thru a paper reading about himself and sees a crossword and the next thing you know…
Check the cipher for bigrams, trigrams etc in both horizontal and vertical.
Eliminate anything that seems to not be useful, and then start making substitutions?
Even if true, this theory could never be proven.
"MY NAME IS TED CRUZ AND MY DAD KILLED JFK" (is a valid homophonic decipherment of the 340)
"LEBRON IS BETTER THAN MICHAEL JORDAN" (also a valid decoding)
"TRUMP WILL BEAT CLINTON IN WISCONSIN" (another, oddly specific, future prediction you can find in the 340)
In short: Any medium-sized message can be stuffed in the 340 if you’re willing to entertain decodings with mostly noise.
Well, not if you count the 33333344444000000 letters. 340. Not less. Easy to write any sentence into the first line but it is not a 45 or 22 or 275 cipher but a 340 (threehundredandforty) cipher.
keepin it like that
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
How about investigating libraries in the areas where the ciphers were sent from, for patrons who might have checked out books on ciphers?
They did…not find him. May even have interviewed him but had nothing else.
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
