It’s amazing how some innocent curiosity can turn into an obsession
It’s amazing how some innocent curiosity can turn into an obsession
Yep. Just think of the positives, doc… Once you’ve lost your job, your home, your family and your friends – you’ll have all the time in the world to pin the tail on the Zodiac donkey.
1) With any of the decrypt apps are you able to put in a keyword for a columnar transposition cipher using the "solved" 340 using the solved 340 with the 408 key as plaintext?
2) Is this what you showed me initially?
3) I’m not sure I’m saying this correctly. It’s difficult to talk about this through messaging, I wish some of us could sit down and hash some of this out.
1) You wish to untranspose columnar transpositon for the "solved" 340 plaintext?
– Open my app (AZdecrypt Lite) and put in the text you want to untranspose in the cipher window. In the Set cipher dimensions bow (where it says 17*20) put in 19 and click on Set cipher dimensions, that will format the text into 19 columns for you. Go to Edit and select Untranspose columnar and you are done.
2) Not sure what you mean by that. I just wanted to show the bigram peak at period 19 and how it relates to transposition.
3) Perhaps we could talk via discord.
I don’t know how you guys do this. It’s maddening. I’m sitting up at night thinking about this stuff and can’t sleep. It’s a little addicting. I have to watch that…
It’s amazing how some innocent curiosity can turn into an obsession
This is indeed a sensitive subject, I often feel the same way. You really have to be careful not to overdo it. I always try to be aware of the following points:
– One has to realize that it is quite possible that no solution will ever be found. This is a reasonable possibility.
– People have always liked the mysterious and all kinds of riddles. It’s only natural that such things haunt you once in a while. But it must not lead to obsession.
– It’s a hobby. Others collect stamps, vacuum their courtyard entrance and paint garden gnomes. There is no arguing about which hobby is better.
– Many statistics indicate that there is a real message hidden under z340. Whatever z340 is, it is not a random sequence of symbols. So there is a certain chance for a solution.
– However, the plaintext can be a pointless jumble of letters. Homophonic encryption of nonsensical text can still show the statistics we see.
– Certain errors when creating the cipher can be the reason that z340 has not yet been solved. Jarlve and smokie treats are currently working on this possibility. Again, there may have been such a serious error in encryption that z340 can never be solved.
– If you ever solve z340, you will probably be disappointed by the plaintext. My personal opinion: The text is no different than z408 and the other Zodiac letters. It certainly won’t be a confession with name and address. With a little luck, a few connections can be made to other victims. It’s just a guess.
– You learn a lot. Mainly historical encryption methods, statistics and mathematics.
– And last but not least: There are always people who are willing to put a lot of time and effort into enormously difficult problems. For such people it is not the short, easy-to-reach successes that are important, but the great challenge. Solving an encryption that has been unsolved for almost 50 years must be overwhelming.
In any case, be careful not to overdo it. And as long as it’s fun and doesn’t obsess you, there’s nothing wrong with it.
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I’ve heard stories about search and rescue dogs getting depressed in real disasters when they fail to find any survivors. Their handlers will sometimes hide in the rubble so the dogs can at least feel like they’ve occasionally succeeded at their jobs.
To keep from getting depressed, go solve some non-Zodiac ciphers to keep your spirits up. 
Guys, thanks for all the feedback and advice, really appreciate it. I can see how simply 1 error when construction a cipher, such as in constructing a columnar transposition, can have catastrophic consequences on the cipher downstream, making it decipherable.
Meant indecipherable
Where do you guys stand on how intelligent this person was? Of average intelligence or above average? You certainly can’t be stupid by any stretch to understand and devise cryptograms I would think. Of course there’s no way to truly measure this without professionally administered psychologic testing.
There are different terms: Intelligent, clever, smart, sneaky, shrewd, wise, educated and many more. "Intelligent" is often used as a collective term, but I personally see many facets here that do not necessarily have anything to do with each other. Zodiac may have had some of each of these adjectives, but I still don’t think he was one of the most intelligent. There are certainly many extremely intelligent people who would not be able to steal a chewing gum secretly without getting caught. On the other hand, there are people who can get away with crime for an incredibly long time, but cannot add up two numbers.
Since you’re probably referring to the encryptions: I don’t think intelligence is a criterion for z408 and z340. One can find the basics for creating such ciphers in any book on the subject.
I don’t think Zodiac really cared about how to encrypt z408 in an effective way. Either he wanted z408 to be cracked, or he was simply too careless. Look at this link:
viewtopic.php?f=81&t=3104
If I’m right, he simply used the standard letter frequency for a "smooth" homophone encryption instead of the distribution in his plaintext. Like I said… that’s just an assumption.
The fact that z340 is not solved yet is not a sign that the creator was particularly intelligent. If it is actually a transposition + homophone encryption, he may simply have been too sluggish / stupid / negligent to correctly encrypt 340 characters.
And in general: It is extremely easy to create a non-crackable encryption with 340 characters.
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Awesome stuff Largo, thx
