And what do the little numbers written below the symbols mean?

These numbers appear to denote the plain text letters. Perhaps they were used to illustrate the concept of homophonic substitution to other people.

1 = O
2 = I
3 = L
4 = K

Top middle has the roman numeral for 1 as in page 1. Then to the left of it in the left upper corner there is 2 and 3. Why is that?

Which worksheet came first?

It is possible that we never got to see the first worksheets as they must have been much more messy.

Just noticed something that was certainly noticed by everyone before me but in the 408, the letter i is represented by either a triangle, a P, a U or e reversed K, but I had personally never noticed that it was always in that precise order.

Just noticed something that was certainly noticed by everyone before me but in the 408, the letter i is represented by either a triangle, a P, a U or e reversed K, but I had personally never noticed that it was always in that precise order.

Indeed. I am not sure if you follow the cipher discussions now and then but whenever we refer to "cycles" or "sequential homophones" it is basically about that property of the cipher text.

doranchak has a detailed page about it here: http://zodiackillerciphers.com/wiki/ind … _sequences

I still wonder where Zodiac has picked up the idea of sequential homophones. Is it in any of the books? I also wonder if this was commonly known to the people who took interest in the Zodiac ciphers back in the days.

So I’m not a genius?

I guess he got the idea in the course of coding his original text. First he certainly thought "Hey! Let’s have several source symbols to one unique target letter". Then he picked those symbols one by one and always in the same order while coding, maybe not to make decyphering his text too hard a task. My take is he wanted his "message" to be decoded, and for two reasons. One, he wanted to play with LE like a cat plays with a mouse. Two, he wanted everyone to believe the next cyphers had a meaning to have people try to decypher them, which would "amuse" him.

So I’m not a genius?

I guess he got the idea in the course of coding his original text. First he certainly thought "Hey! Let’s have several source symbols to one unique target letter". Then he picked those symbols one by one and always in the same order while coding, maybe not to make decyphering his text too hard a task. My take is he wanted his "message" to be decoded, and for two reasons. One, he wanted to play with LE like a cat plays with a mouse. Two, he wanted everyone to believe the next cyphers had a meaning to have people try to decypher them, which would "amuse" him.

i agree but think it’s less complicated. i think he simply didn’t realize being cyclic would be a clue. as you said, it makes it easier to encode and i believe he was lazy. i think he would have avoided cycles if he was aware they could aid in decoding. i definitely believe he was more careful in the 340.

This is true he left a lot of things to chance in his "work" (murders and letters combined).

It’s interesting that most of the little numbers are written below symbols that solve to the letters "K" "I" or "L" since Harden said he thought Zodiac possibly would use the word "Kill" a lot in his message.

The "I" he wrote the number "2" under, which is the most frequently used letter of the letters "K" "I" or "L." The "L" got the number "3", which is the 2nd most frequently used letter, and the "K" got numbered "4." So, perhaps the letters "K" "I" and "L" he numbered in order from most frequently used, to least frequently used (starting from 2). Maybe he was trying to find some sort of rhythm with the numbers somehow? I don’t get it, but he solved it, so I can’t argue with his methods.

Then he gave some of the symbols that solve to the letter "O" the number "1." I don’t see how that letter would tie in with the word "kill" necessarily. It is the next most frequently used letter after the letter "I" though. Maybe that has something to do with it.

It’s also interesting that he has the letter "Y" written under some of the backwards "Q" symbols which solve to the letter "M." Like initially he thought that symbol solved to "Y" but changed it.

He also has a "4" written under the "A" symbol in row 4 which ultimately he has solving to the letter "W."

and then a couple of the symbols he just has the proper letter that each symbol solves to written beneath.

It looks to me just like a snapshot of the process he went through to decipher this thing. It’s hard to fully understand what’s going on, but still fun to look at.

Thanks for posting.

It is the next most frequently used letter after the letter "I" though.

That doesn’t look right. The letter "O" is used more frequently than the letter "I," not less frequently. My bad.

Yes very interesting if I don’t say…. Zep on Youtube has a full video on this and I would like to give my 2cents for whats it’s worth! Do the Mods mind if I make a few points here even though it will be from a Harden POI angle? ( I don’t need a bun fight right ATM) I will add it in the Harden Suspect page however I really think it’s time to remove him from the TOP SECRET Section and into the general area of the rest of Zodiac POI! Cheers Travis

An article from Dec 14, 1969 in the Dayton Daily News included an image of what appears to be the Hardens’ worksheet for part 1 of Z408:

http://zodiackillerciphers.com/images/D … _1969_.jpg

But it’s different from the known Harden worksheet for part 1:

http://zodiackillerciphers.com/wiki/ima … rden-1.jpg

Looks like the same handwriting. The Hardens apparently had done up multiple versions of the solution. The one in the Dayton paper has a slightly different solution since it has "HONGERTUE" instead of "DANGERTUE" (for "DANGEROUS"). That explains why we saw "HONGERTUE" in some of the newspaper articles that came out after the Hardens announced their solution.

Which worksheet came first? And what do the little numbers written below the symbols mean?

I don’t know if I’m misreading your comments Dave, but HONGERTUE was given as the plaintext on August 9th 1969 in the article ‘Murder Code is Broken’, five days before the Daily News publication. https://www.flickr.com/photos/112412867 … 880253085/

P.S. It is written in the article text.

Yes, I had seen "hongertue" in the articles before, but was always puzzled about its origin, until finding the worksheet.

My guess is he made multiple versions by August 9th. The logical route would be from HONGERTUE to DANGERTUE to DANGEROUS. But not much is logical about this case.

OK A couple of points on the HONGERTUE VS DANGERTUE anomaly. There are a few strange things that just do NOT make sense. The Cross hair symbol only ever stood for the letter ‘D’ and was used 4 Times in the 408 Cypher. However it was mistaken once for ‘H’ in HONGERTUE but used correctly 3 other times? To add to this very strange ‘H’ mistake is coincidentally the following letter ‘O’ which was should have been an ‘A’ (as it was the symbol ‘S’). Now the symbol ‘S’ was used 6 times for the letter ‘A’ but again here it’s mistaken for an ‘O’? You can even see the ‘S’ symbol being used in the word ‘THAN’ on the 4th line on the HONGERTUE work sheet. Now as an English teacher (as well as History and Maths etc) I find it very difficult to believe that Harden wouldn’t try these other ‘possibilities’ of D & A, which he used correctly elsewhere to come up with the more sensible DANGERTUE, unless you suspect there was a more sinister clue to be had. The Cross hair symbol representing D was mistakenly replaced with a H (ie DH = Donald Harden) So in reality the Crosshair should have been ‘D’ the ‘O’ should never have been there and these two mistakes were followed by the letter ‘N’ and if you look closely there is a very faint circle around the three letters ‘D-O-N’

Also to add if you look at the ‘A’ in ‘MOAT’ he had started to write the letter ‘S’ anyway and to top it all off, on the second ‘DANGERTUE’ work sheet the ‘C’ in "SO MUCH FUN’ is changed to a ‘D’ followed by another ‘H’ (DH)for NO explainable reason!