Made like The Zodiac would have.
Took a few hours with no more knowledge of ciphers than that learned from the 408.
Can you elucidate
This is a cipher made very similarly to the 408.
What’s the point, you ask?
Well, I have no cryptographical training and yet was able to create a cipher similar to that of the Zodiac’s, in a few hours, using no more knowledge than that learned from The Zodiac’s own handiwork.
There is a hidden message you would like solved!
No, I already have the solution, and zkdecrypto could crack the above cipher in seconds.
Thank you for this cipher jroberson. Do you have a text version? It looks very, very nice!
I’m with Jarlve, I’d like to run this through ZKD just for fun, but there AIN’T NO WAY, lol – that I am going to go through transcribing it into ASCII or numbers to do it. It’s fun to do these, but not that fun.
-glurk
——————————–
I don’t believe in monsters.
Thank you for this cipher jroberson. Do you have a text version? It looks very, very nice!
Thank you, Jarlve.
So what do you mean a "text version"? As in an ASCII/Unicode text file analogue? No, but I could make one, which might be a great deal more fun.
Pretty much the entire thing was made non-digitally using ruled notebook paper, pencil, white art paper, ruler, and a Blue-ish Sharpie.
Some of the letters are not aligned as properly as I wanted but…it was a major pain in the back side to make in the few hours I donated to the project. I had to start over probably three or four times…
I think the point I was trying to make is that….if I could construct this in a few hours with absolutely ZERO cryptographical training or experience, The Zodiac could have done so as well, which imo pretty much destroys the long-held notion this guy had military codebreaking training.
So what do you mean a "text version"? As in an ASCII/Unicode text file analogue? No, but I could make one, which might be a great deal more fun.
Yes. ASCII text file version of your 405 if possible. And if you want to make more go ahead! I have a cipher challenge thread if you are interested to enter a cipher: viewtopic.php?f=81&t=2133
I think the point I was trying to make is that….if I could construct this in a few hours with absolutely ZERO cryptographical training or experience, The Zodiac could have done so as well, which imo pretty much destroys the long-held notion this guy had military codebreaking training.
Ofcourse, but there are some things to consider. The ciphers were made in the late 60’s. And perhaps the 408 exhibits some properties that hint military training. Your pen and paper cipher is interesting in this regard. I’m eager to compare it to the Zodiac ciphers.
A question on my mind here, to what extent are the irregularities in the 408 intentional?
Nice cipher penmanship 
Here is a first attempt at a textual version:
T[jaIfd+@rg=Dhj
2moK0Vs.uJ*v;w*
AEGbX>^GH5Uk(:?
<Tu_tF!#jx»i~R]
7-z{}pNg$3lM9fS
*@I-«Z2»|ks/J>4
Tq?PAsWH61yt,G$
mQa¨!iB=d09+vr
{ezUWd%6[w&L#h
J>Ri5-yXp{m¬:_
3Zs0v8!<jw4g^`j
(GM1OCTxQ’#-17n
,};fW9@/[a&2jm¨
{|E0CuvrX=V!KDh
cZJ~l,.53)|?_os
w-y$41]bé^Fe(*x
’RCUSyq/:<&8èz
`?¬7W#«6/¨-O}Q>
au=é0vUF.W!:Iwd
E^zG*(d-«Xx<R#Z
4A)7u/9k1ay=’{H
l}YfJ.I:t~&DQ¨
@r8<V3X]1S*m`ic
Oe0B6p%v5NM|Ph#
Z>w*^do«4(/9xI+
7bga1[è}Gq’KLfT
=d.Ak&!@uUFHtBz
Please counter-verify, this is a rough draft. I count 99 different symbols; that’s a lot for a cipher this size…
_pi
I think the point I was trying to make is that….if I could construct this in a few hours with absolutely ZERO cryptographical training or experience, The Zodiac could have done so as well, which imo pretty much destroys the long-held notion this guy had military codebreaking training.
Ofcourse, but there are some things to consider. The ciphers were made in the late 60’s. And perhaps the 408 exhibits some properties that hint military training. Your pen and paper cipher is interesting in this regard. I’m eager to compare it to the Zodiac ciphers.
A question on my mind here, to what extent are the irregularities in the 408 intentional?
Hmm, I don’t know. IMO, there’s nothing in the 408 that couldn’t have been learned from a book. Plenty of tomes at the time covered homophonic ciphers of the same ilk as the 408.
As for intentional…not really sure what’s intentional in the 408. Seems to me a lot of misspellings and mistakes that hint at a lazy, semi-disorganized mind. Sure, the Zodiac used a lot of symbols, but one would need only a book of such things.
I used Wikipedia…
What exactly do you see in the 408 as indication of clear intent?
Nice cipher penmanship
Here is a first attempt at a textual version:
T[jaIfd+@rg=Dhj 2moK0Vs.uJ*v;w* AEGbX>^GH5Uk(:? <Tu_tF!#jx»i~R] 7-z{}pNg$3lM9fS *@I-«Z2»|ks/J>4 Tq?PAsWH61yt,G$ mQa¨!iB=d09+vr {ezUWd%6[w&L#h J>Ri5-yXp{m¬:_ 3Zs0v8!<jw4g^`j (GM1OCTxQ’#-17n ,};fW9@/[a&2jm¨ {|E0CuvrX=V!KDh cZJ~l,.53)|?_os w-y$41]bé^Fe(*x ’RCUSyq/:<&8èz `?¬7W#«6/¨-O}Q> au=é0vUF.W!:Iwd E^zG*(d-«Xx<R#Z 4A)7u/9k1ay=’{H l}YfJ.I:t~&DQ¨ @r8<V3X]1S*m`ic Oe0B6p%v5NM|Ph# Z>w*^do«4(/9xI+ 7bga1[è}Gq’KLfT =d.Ak&!@uUFHtBzPlease counter-verify, this is a rough draft. I count 99 different symbols; that’s a lot for a cipher this size…
_pi
Hmmm, well I don’t have the original key set, but IIRC, there are a lot of symbols. 90 or so sounds about right. Basically I just used a frequency table to allocate x symbols per each letter. So near one hundred would be about right, even though I realize I could have used far fewer.
Anyway, I’m not sure that ASCII transliteration is correct. For instance, the symbol .. is an F in the first line of the first third, but in the second third on the second line, where there should be another F, another symbol appears.
Perhaps I’m missing something but I assume you replaced each symbol with an ASCII code, correct? Or is your transliteration in reverse? Is the bottom third meant to be the top third?
I had placed the cipher blocks in the order of your image naming convention (GEDC0300b.jpg, GEDC0301b.jpg, GEDC0302b.jpg). If I put the blocks in the order they appear in your post, you get:
au=é0vUF.W!:Iwd
E^zG*(d-«Xx<R#Z
4A)7u/9k1ay=’{H
l}YfJ.I:t~&DQ¨
@r8<V3X]1S*m`ic
Oe0B6p%v5NM|Ph#
Z>w*^do«4(/9xI+
7bga1[è}Gq’KLfT
=d.Ak&!@uUFHtBz
J>Ri5-yXp{m¬:_
3Zs0v8!<jw4g^`j
(GM1OCTxQ’#-17n
,};fW9@/[a&2jm¨
{|E0CuvrX=V!KDh
cZJ~l,.53)|?_os
w-y$41]bé^Fe(*x
’RCUSyq/:<&8èz
`?¬7W#«6/¨-O}Q>
T[jaIfd+@rg=Dhj
2moK0Vs.uJ*v;w*
AEGbX>^GH5Uk(:?
<Tu_tF!#jx»i~R]
7-z{}pNg$3lM9fS
*@I-«Z2»|ks/J>4
Tq?PAsWH61yt,G$
mQa¨!iB=d09+vr
{ezUWd%6[w&L#h
Does this look in the proper order? And yes, I replaced each symbol with an ASCII code.
I think the point I was trying to make is that….if I could construct this in a few hours with absolutely ZERO cryptographical training or experience, The Zodiac could have done so as well, which imo pretty much destroys the long-held notion this guy had military codebreaking training.
Ofcourse, but there are some things to consider. The ciphers were made in the late 60’s. And perhaps the 408 exhibits some properties that hint military training. Your pen and paper cipher is interesting in this regard. I’m eager to compare it to the Zodiac ciphers.
A question on my mind here, to what extent are the irregularities in the 408 intentional?
Hmm, I don’t know. IMO, there’s nothing in the 408 that couldn’t have been learned from a book. Plenty of tomes at the time covered homophonic ciphers of the same ilk as the 408.
As for intentional…not really sure what’s intentional in the 408. Seems to me a lot of misspellings and mistakes that hint at a lazy, semi-disorganized mind. Sure, the Zodiac used a lot of symbols, but one would need only a book of such things.
I used Wikipedia…
What exactly do you see in the 408 as indication of clear intent?
I don’t really know. It’s an open question on my mind. The irregularities known mainly are the symbol and plaintext errors, and mixing cyclic with random homophonic substitution but there may be more.
It seems that I cannot solve your cipher (_pi transcription) with my automatic solver (which is optimized for speed solving around 340 multiplicity levels) and neither with ZKDecrypto (w/o user interference).
The multiplicity is an indication of how hard a substitution cipher is to solve (higher is harder) and is simply the number of symbols divided by the amount of characters.
Zodiac 408: 54 / 408 = 0.132
Zodiac 340: 63 / 340 = 0.185
jroberson 405 (_pi transcript.): 99 / 405 = 0.244
With the newer _pi transcription this is the best scoring example out of 100 runs on thorough with my solver. The higher multiplicity seems to be an issue here for my solver.
4477_680_75.txt:
tieratonguedher factserancessed collionnotheres ingoughdintonof whislaccoustswe nganthatherlybe dresarinceonehd lortaindtorsmoh ergontetionsinc urswhatchetoldm adlatiesmecrarm etrandheoreaala ndbountoittimth elfadithcelesam eduninghallimil eatycaborandese rsdouthodistinc rilluentohandor himthordthreamm itisallgiustbes oftocratshoyedi shimineemedinsb lacedheryairnou sthandidlylourc hhisolustatinty toitheiderandth edcouratietimem
