Mr Oranchak – I hope you are reading this. Forgive me if this has been addressed, but I did not see it on a quick search of your post history over the the last two days. I do not post here ever, but I do often post often on other forums. I am fairly confident the remaining 6 letters in section 2 of the 340 cypher that spell "LIFE IS" are intended to be placed at the end of the cipher. Here is why. 1) They do not fit with Section 2’s method of encryption, which is down one – over two, but they do fit with section 3 which is decrypted horizontally. Additionally, although they are spelled forwards, I think they were placed backwards, as section 3 is the only place in the cipher where words appear backwards. 2) As has been pointed out, they do not fit cleanly at the end of section 2. You need to make suppositions about what the message is supposed to say if you put them there, and same if you insert them before the last word of "DEATH" in the cipher. That is a mistake many other codebreakers have made in attempting to decipher the 340.

If you put them at the end, and then reverse the order, in the same way the words are reversed in Section 3, you get a nice, clean message:
"I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE. IN PARADICE, DEATH IS LIFE."

So where you have spaces 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305 – They should be 339, 338, 337, 336, 335, 334.

If you also look at the pattern of words in section 3, you will see that they follow a repeating pattern of two backwards words, followed by one forwards word. So it would stand to reason any two words that came after "DEATH," would be written backwards.

The words that breakup section 2, are written backwards, although they read forwards.

Congratulations to you and your team, amazing work on your discovery!

First, that this is revealed as a real code, a complex one, one that defied the efforts of the FBI and others to decode it for 50 years. I think it tells us that Z was very intelligent, had some real skill in codes and mathematics.

I think the fact that it took this long, and required a level of computational sophistication that wasn’t even perceived of in 1969, tells us the exact opposite. Anyone with their hands on a basic cipher handbook could have layered on a few of these strategies. But what they wouldn’t realize that in doing so, it would make it close to impossible to untangle it. Why bother? I can’t imagine that he thought he was creating a code that would be so difficult to crack. If he was really skilled, he would have realized that.

I think the Z13 and other short ciphers are also hints that he really wasn’t all that much of an expert in codes and mathematics. Perhaps there’s something there that eludes the experts, but I think that Occam’s Razor would suggest the he just didn’t understand that such short ciphers generally can’t be cracked with a unique, and sensible, solutions.

Agree with both of these observation/points of view. If the cipher actually contained strong hints about his identity, then maybe it would be plausible that he intended for it to not be solved for decades. But it’s just more vague taunting, with a reference to a current event. He did a poor job estimating the difficulty of solving it.

He did a poor job estimating the difficulty of solving it.

I’d say, from his perspective, he was perfect yet again. It was an actual, solvable cipher with a coherent solution, and it fooled LE and everyone else for over half a century. Meanwhile his identity still remains a mystery. These were his objectives, exactly. So far, he has proven to be smarter than everyone else.

There is not universal agreement – AT ALL – that he intended to "fool LE and everyone else for over half a century."

I can’t read his mind, and frankly neither can you. His intentions as to the time expected to solve the cipher is unknowable, unless and until he comes forth and tells us.

Interesting that he learned from the previous cipher. Note the reduced use of LL and I. Also he seems to insinuate that the was done collecting slaves at the number 7 ?

For what’s its worth, my opinion is that he did intend to make it harder, but not five-decades-later harder. The contemporaneous reference to the Dunbar TV show seems like a really strong indication that he expected it to be solved in a reasonable amount of time.

This gets totally off-topic, this is about 340 discussions and context.

What can it tell about his background? Is is something like only an expert could come up with? How complex is the code 340?

Hello

Observing as keys of the cipher, I found something at least, curious.

KGOTV

Maybe it coincidence, or maybe not.

Marcelo.

I wrote this in another thread. Probably more appropriate here.

Look below. It seems the Zodiac was able to formulate the cipher in a way to make the pivots important. Sl(a)ves intersecting with the pivot point of the first Pivot and extending through the second pivot.

Reminds of the LAV and where Paradice and Slaves intersection at the A on the Halloween card.

HER which the Cipher starts off with before decoding is right above LAV.

Makes me wonder if the construction started as the cipher symbol layout as we have known it and he built a solution with the pivots in mind.

What can it tell about his background? Is is something like only an expert could come up with? How complex is the code 340?

Hello Mr Araujo Welcome!!

IMO, you don’t necessarily have to be an expert in this area, because coding something is simpler than decoding it.
I mean, you can create some ciphers from reading some books on the subject.

Imagine a message, take some symbols, create a pattern that only you know, that’s it, this is the cipher.

Anyway, it is possible that he was an expert, we will never know maybe.

Marcelo

Hi Marcelo, thanks for answering back! Given that it took 51 years to get it decoded, I thought it may have been more complex than usual. Anyway, clues are the key here to possibly catch him.

What can it tell about his background? Is is something like only an expert could come up with? How complex is the code 340?

Transposition part is the ‘knight move’. He might knew something about chess.
Substitution part is the same method as 408. Yet to be discovered if it could be cracked the same way as 408 in 69.
He wanted it to be decrypted. Clear message. A hint with two dashes dividing 1st and 2nd part.
There is an offset error in 2nd part. He didn’t check the result, obviously. Not a math/science/accountant type. Not a programmer too , we always double check (ok, not always, we have deadlines sometimes).

I personally think that the final reading sequence that resembles "knight move" does not necessarily mean that Z was chess enthusiast of some kind. As Paul_Averly points out in viewtopic.php?p=83079#p83079, the cipher probably started as a kind of scytale cipher written into two 9 x 17 matrices. Then he probably wanted to make it somehow a bit more difficult, so he chose to shift (or, more precisely, rotate) each line to the right. And in this layout shifting/rotating each line by 2 (compared to previous one) gives really nice diagonal shape, some kind of "stairs".

Hi.
Looking at the keys of the cipher 340, I noticed that the alphabetical symbols of the Word "ZODIAC" form "RANEDY"

I searched for names and places that were related and I was not successful. The most I found was this crazy story that a guy named Randy Kenney accused a friend of being the killer.https://abc7news.com/zodiac-killer-killers-symbol-cross-hairs-lake-berryessa/7852/– The most curious thing I say is more by his name RANDY (the guy who reported his friend) being similar to the name

If someone has already observed something with a name or something, I would like to know

Marcelo