could be that the first set are gobbledygook just like the last "18" group of letters in the 408 just makes it harder to decipher with a bunch of nothing tossed in.

some others on here have done fascinating work on letter distribution. in line with the fbi’s belief, there does seem to be enough of a pattern to make it appear there is a solution that isn’t just garbage.

I believe that there is a good possibility that the reason the cipher has not been solved is because it can’t be solved. I do believe that there is a real message; however I don’t think it’s a real cipher. I wonder if Z’s ego was hurt when the first cipher was broken so he decided to write a message, use a random symbol for each letter, and then send it off. That way he knows there is a message in there, but also knows that there is very slim to zero chance of it ever being solved. Or it could be a real cipher shuffled in a way that the chances of it being solved are next to none because you have to first solve it like a Rubik’s Cube. I’m not saying that people should give up trying to solve it, because you never know, but I kind of think that all we are doing is thrilling him that people are still trying to break the mystery of his code (if he’s still alive). I also think people give him too much credit. I don’t believe he was some sort of genius, but a psycho that was lucky because he choose his victims at random (except maybe his first) and played different police departments against each other.

The411,

This typically happens with homophonic substitution, more symbols increase the chances. There are larger unique series to be found within the 340 given you could start anywhere.

The first two rows of 17 only have 1 repeat. This makes the cipher harder to solve, since there is less structure. You could think the 340 wouldn’t be much harder than the 408 but given the increased symbol count and shorter cipher it becomes much harder computationaly wise because of how it all works together.

Maybe it is worth comparing the 340 versus other similar ciphers (the test suite that comes with ZKDecrypto perhaps) in terms of repeats. If the repeats in the 340 are more concentrated then there will be more large series of uniques. In turn, probably, greatly increasing the difficulty of the cipher.

340 in numbers: https://www.dropbox.com/s/agb38v5qzase4 … s.txt?dl=0

I believe that there is a good possibility that the reason the cipher has not been solved is because it can’t be solved. I do believe that there is a real message; however I don’t think it’s a real cipher. I wonder if Z’s ego was hurt when the first cipher was broken so he decided to write a message, use a random symbol for each letter, and then send it off. That way he knows there is a message in there, but also knows that there is very slim to zero chance of it ever being solved. Or it could be a real cipher shuffled in a way that the chances of it being solved are next to none because you have to first solve it like a Rubik’s Cube. I’m not saying that people should give up trying to solve it, because you never know, but I kind of think that all we are doing is thrilling him that people are still trying to break the mystery of his code (if he’s still alive). I also think people give him too much credit. I don’t believe he was some sort of genius, but a psycho that was lucky because he choose his victims at random (except maybe his first) and played different police departments against each other.

Not a chance. That first one was meant to be solved. I think he (they?) made it that was on purpose, knowing that the following ones would/could never be solved, but it kept people focused on it thinking that it could be solved. Keep ’em busy!