Rome wasn’t built in a day! Yes most people who have wrestled with the 340 agree it is likely there is some additional step needed beyond a straight HSC. But in 45 years we have yet to solve any part of the 340, we have not even solved one symbol. This may give us a clue on how to solve the first stage of the 340. Let’s see if we can do that! Then we can see where if anywhere that gets us, and in doing so maybe it leads to ideas for the second stage or additional complexities of the solution.

Ideas need some time to grow. Finder and Doranchak have not yet presented us with their computer study and final numbers. When they do I am sure they will appreciate constructive criticism, questions, suggestions and ideas. But until they present the computer study and final numbers, we don’t even know what exactly they have. But just initially it appears very unlikely to be a chance event and thus is a very promising discovery.

I’m sure we’ve solved one symbol. In fact, we’ve probably solved a handful of symbols. The problem is, we just don’t know it. And the main reason we don’t know it are (likely) the additional complexities. I never said Finder and Doranchak should abandon their efforts. By all means, please continue. But, if we are going to be honest with ourselves, the probability of this analysis leading to a 340 solution is low.

I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

AK Wilks: I do think we have solved at least one symbol. The study by Quicktrader IMO confirms what I felt the Raw Graysmith as reconstructed by Ed O’Neil, Claston, Kite and Wilks showed, which was that the "+" is probably "L". (And FWIW "+" and "L" are separated by just two spaces in a direct NE angle on the QWERTY keyboard).

Zodiac Revisited:" But, if we are going to be honest with ourselves, the probability of this analysis leading to a 340 solution is low."

AK Wilks: The probability of a baby becoming a Nobel Prize winner or Super Bowl QB, is, if we are going to be honest with ourselves, low. That does not mean, however, that we should shoot the baby in its crib. Let it develop a little bit. Maybe he won’t win a Super Bowl, but a Rose Bowl. Maybe she won’t get the Nobel Prize, but she will get a PHD and make some small advancement in science. That is often how progress is made. Not one huge jarring discovery, but a series of small advancements, causing further studies, spurring new ideas, leading to more small advances.

I am not yet prepared to say if this is or is not a significant find. I look at what Finder found, and it is something nobody ever noticed before. At initial glance it seems it may have some merit. The initial numbers as presented by Finder seem to be correct and are impressive. And the methodology used to produce the numbers seems sound to my unexpert view. I will withhold my final verdict until I see what Doranchak’s computer study, final numbers and critique of Finder’s study looks like.

On the flip side I am just saying let us see the full presentation of the theory and the first study of it by a third person (Doranchak) before we pronounce it a failure! I am reminded of one of JFK’s first press conferences, just six months into his term, when a reporter asked "What do you think of the Republican National Committee declaring your Presidency a failure?" (JFK answered "I’m surprised they waited that long." )

I will let Doranchak (and others) evaluate and critique Finder’s numbers which incorporate distances expected and differences observed. The study by Finder seems very sound, and the numbers are quite impressive that the observed distances are consistently closer far beyond what we would expect by chance. But I will wait to see what Doranchak and others have to say, and if further studies confirm what has been shown.

What I will note here, after a very quick and rough look, is what I will call the "Slam Dunks". These are the plaintext and ciphertext that are IMMEDIATELY ADJACENT to each other. I am being conservative in judging what is "immediately adjacent", excluding even C-E which are directly aligned in a NW angle, but one space apart, and the H-M which are very close, but not actually adjacent. They could and arguably should be included, but I have left them out for now.

Here are the Slam Dunks:

1. . A-S
2. . B-V
3. . D-F
4. . E-W
5. . G-R
6. . I-U
7. . I-K
8. . R-T
9. . T-H
10. U-Y
11. V-C
12. W-A

So by a quick and rough count we have at least 12 (and arguably 14) instances where the letters are right next to each other. So if anyone finds distances of two spaces and up too attenuated and imprecise as a basis for expected and observed distances, another study could be done to see how often it would randomly occur that 12 plaintexts are right next to their matching ciphertexts on a keyboard. It seems to me that 12 is rather extraordinary, and my spidey sense is tingling that this is NOT a coincidence. But maybe Finder and/or Doranchak can do a study on "Slam Dunks", i.e., immediately adjacent plaintext and ciphertext letters, that eventually would produce a hard number probability.

I think the numbers are there.

The simplest explanation is that the Zodiac made his key on a typewriter.

If even just one of the "simulations" mirrors the 408’s keyboard adjacency, the usefulness of this discovery evaporates.

Your logic is strange.

If we scrambled the 408’s key for a very very very long time, eventually one of the random simulations will happen upon the actual key. So even one of the simulations mirrors the 408’s actual key, therefore the usefulness of the discovered solution evaporates. Following your logic, the discovery of the actual key is useless.

Or let’s try another thought experiment. There are slots for 6 Scrabble tiles. Your friend chooses to assign the tiles at random, or to spell out a word. But you don’t know which option your friend chooses. You arrive in the room and see the slots are filled with the letters "ZODIAC", and you have to determine if the tiles were chosen randomly or intentionally.

Assuming each letter is equally likely (1 in 26), you observe that your friend had a 1 in 309,000,000 chance of accidentally spelling the word "ZODIAC". So, there’s your one "simulation" that happens upon the actual word. Does it make your observation useless?

It’s called being critical and skeptical. Can you even imagine where the world would be, scientifically and technologically, if every half-baked, hole-riddled, cockamamie idea was given immediate credence?
…
But we’re supposed to unthinkingly accept Ross Sullivan/Richard Gaikowski was the Zodiac and he used typewriter keyboard adjacency to construct his ciphers?

More strange logic.

Finder isn’t making bold claims about the 408. He is making observations and reporting them. Others are projecting explanations or hypotheses to describe the data. But Finder has simply reported data and the results of his experiments.

You seem to be saying, "why report the observation if there is no known purpose for it?" But this is ridiculous, because we don’t often have explanations until all the observations and data have been reported. The most important first step is to gather real facts. We shouldn’t stop an investigation just because we initially think some detail has no importance. I don’t anyone can predict which facts will be important.

Finder has responded to questions about the facts. You seem to be fixated on your emotional reaction to the hypotheses that others have suggested to explain the facts. No one is asking you to blindly accept these explanations.

i agree with ak wilks and doranchak. someone noticed something new in a forty year old unsolved cipher. of course you’re going to try to see if it means anything. presupposing you know what it means is a fool’s errand. run some tests, see if it’s an aberration or randomness, then start to look at what it could tell us. it doesn’t necessarily mean zodiac had to use a typewriter. it could mean some part of his encoding scheme mirrored some part of the layout of a standard english language keyboard. it could be related entirely to some other scheme but it IS a recognizable pattern and that’s what it’s going to take to solve this thing.

an example – suppose zodiac used the first letter of each word of the first paragraph of some book as a key, and utilized the non alphabet characters as repeats. it would take someone recognizing that part of the encryption follows the pattern of each word of the first paragraph of that book so that we could further deduce whether there is enough scaffolding of a pattern to figure out the rest. if we shoot that down before testing then we’ve basically said anything that doesn’t completely fit an easily recognizable pattern isn’t worth further investigation, but the catch-22 is that anything that fit an easily recognizable pattern would have solved this cipher twenty or thirty years ago. there is absolutely no other way this cipher is going to be solved.

@Jroberson, you seem to spend a lot of times ‘debating’ in threads that you don’t seem to support, or think to be true. First the Sullivan thread, and now this one. Ease up on these kind of posts please, or your debating is going to look more like ‘trolling’. That won’t be tolerated.

Guys, please carry on with your work!

Darwin was mocked for claiming that humans evolved from monkeys…

Not to be skeptical…but Darwin never said that. People just misunderstood.

Finder, I’ve found that some people are going to debate you for the sake of debating. Please do press on with your project and don’t get side tracked.

It’s called being critical and skeptical. Can you even imagine where the world would be, scientifically and technologically, if every half-baked, hole-riddled, cockamamie idea was given immediate credence?

Einstein’s theory of special relativity was ridiculed for years by the brightest minds on the planet. Einstein then ridiculed quantum mechanics. People laughed at the Wright Brothers. Galileo was forced to recant his science. Darwin was mocked for claiming that humans evolved from monkeys. Global Climate Change is, to this day, debated and often labeled by college-educated citizens and professionals as junk science.

But we’re supposed to unthinkingly accept Ross Sullivan/Richard Gaikowski was the Zodiac and he used typewriter keyboard adjacency to construct his ciphers?

That’s just doubly absurd.

You should be glad some of us are skeptical. It is after all the scientific way, the crucible in which truth, real truth, is forged.

Fortunately for the rest of us Einstein, the Wrights, Galileo, Darwin and others weren’t dissuaded by this kind of pompous negativism.

Quite an interesting and original observation. I am still reflecting on the probabilities and am conducting some calculations and simulations of my own but I think Finder did a good job presenting his idea and backing it with a rational methodology.

A few random comments:
– It would probably be unlikely to find a backslash () key on a zodiac-era typewriter.
– In some typewriters, the "+" key is actually located on the top-left corner of the keyboard, making it much closer to the "E". That’s the case for many Olympia typewriters for example, such as the Olympia SM-3 De Luxe (circa 1958):

– I am not too convinced about the Greek letters aspect of this idea. It requires an additional translation step that I find unlikely, especially since it is applied to only 3 symbols. Furthermore, 2 of the 3 Greek letters are not really letters: a black-filled triangle interpreted as "delta" and an overlined caret interpreted as "pi".

The following link describes a vast collection of vintage typewriters, including good quality pictures of them: http://www.mrmartinweb.com/type.htm. I find it pertinent to the topic at hand as a reference.

Anyway, as mentioned above, I’ll continue analyzing this idea…

_pi

I programmatically simulated a random assignment of typewriter symbols for each of the plaintext letters you have identified in your initial exercice. However, I have discarded the "" symbol and your greek symbols (see my previous post). I respected the z408 distribution, meaning that the program assigns the same number of symbols per plaintext letter as in the z408.

For each iteration, the program measures the total distance of the key from the plaintext letters. This is, for a given generated cipher key, the sum of all distances between plaintext letters and their respective symbols. This simple metric clearly indicates how far away ALL the symbols are from their plaintext letters.

For the z408 key, given the set of criteria specified above, the total distance value is 124.

My objective was to determine how a random assignment of symbols was likely to have a total distance equal or lower than the z408 key. The lower the likelihood, the higher the probability that the zodiac employed this typewriter scheme to select the symbols.

I have executed multiple runs of 1 million and 10 million iterations with the latest version of my code and I obtain stable results:

12.8% of randomly generated cipher keys exhibit a total distance equal or lower to 124. The following graph shows how a sample of 1 million executions is distributed:

This essentially means that if somebody randomly assigned symbols to the plaintext letters without looking at a typewriter, he/she would have 1 out of 8 chances to obtain a set of symbols located more closely on a typewriter to their respective plaintext letters than what the z408 exhibits.

My opinion is that the chances are high that the relative proximity of the z408’s plaintext letters to their respective symbols on a keyboard is coincidental. Even more so because this hypothesis does not address 27% of the z408 symbols (i.e. all the non-alphabetic symbols).

_pi

_pi, your simulation’s results sounds reasonable. Like you, though I forgot to explicitly clarify, I left out all Greek characters (except for the symbol used to represent P, which I thought was clearly pi, and from your former statements, I see might’ve been an incorrect presumption on my part) and / and + for the exact reasons you mention.

I’d like to respectfully disagree with your conclusion, however, on the basis of your metric. I almost used the same metric as you when I first set out to perform the simulation, but realized that the sum of all distances may be too reductive, and in effect, lose information about the micro-statistical distributions for each key.

More specifically, our simulations do completely agree on the macro scale. On average, a key is only about 5 spaces from any other key. For 20 plaintext symbols each represented by 2 characters on average, that’d suggest an overall average around 200 for the total distance metric (just a very rough estimate in my head without looking at exact numbers), which makes your 124 number sound very reasonable for the 12% point.

We differ in how we investigate the micro features of the key distribution. Specifically, my results show that he didn’t select certain keys very much below the expected distance; these keys were likely chosen by chance. But my results show that for a subset of the plaintext letters (6-8 of the 22 or 25-33%), the key does seem to mirror the keyboard more than statistically likely. Or without reference to statistical distributions at all, much like AK Wilks observed, 12-14 symbols are immediately adjacent "slam dunks."

In my previous posts, I’ve detailed, along with graphics of my simulation, how I used confidence intervals computed from the simulation’s set of results to compute the odds of these micro-level similarities to the keyboard. Was my argument unclear in any way? Or do you disagree with my statistical analysis? I don’t ask these questions rhetorically or heatedly, but truly in the interest of discussion of our methods; if I’ve made a logical error or statistical flub anywhere, I’d be happiest to know of the mistake to improve my skills as an objective scientist.

In essence, I think your methods are generally sound, but in effect, neglect the data’s variance, instead focusing only on its mean.

Perhaps we can both code a "slam-dunk test," because I think that test would simply and easily (without complicated statistics that might obfuscate my argument) capture this idea of variance at the micro-statistical level. I haven’t yet done so, so I’m not sure what the results will show. But perhaps it’s a good compromise before we completely dismiss the statistical significance of the observation.

Reminds me of Einstein versus Bohr. (not meant jokingly btw)

Finder and _pi, thanks for taking the time to do these analyses. I have to say, it is incredibly refreshing to see some real science being done on the ciphers for a change.

Absolutely agree, doranchak.

To summarize my last post more succinctly and perhaps more clearly, I feel that _pi’s simulation tests the hypothesis that the 408’s entire key was built to mirror the keyboard’s layout (which was slightly different from my observation), whereas my own simulation tests the hypothesis that some subset of the key (though not the whole key) mirrors the keyboard’s layout (i.e. was more "keyboard adjacent" than statistically likely).