I (using ZKD) have already solved this.

THIS IS THE END OF THE BEGIN

Too easy. Amazing what my lousy kludge of a program can do, I guess.

(Sorry, jroberson, you got it wrong)

BE GOOD NOW.

-glurk

Great stuff, Glurk… he did it instantly folks BTW.

Feel free to PM me the entire solution.

Like jrob, it took me ages to put together and I learned a fair bit about how mistakes can be made putting such a thing together. And how it’s a pain in the neck to do.

I thought the little added-complexity I added might fox dekrypto a bit, but not so!

BTW, the multiplicity as I calculated is 0.16666-recurring.

I’ll let others work on it. It made for a good getaway, but it is not so easy.

-glurk

EDIT: Funny thing is I LIKE jroberson, although he is an @$$. That’s a cipher, BTW.

Thanks Glurk for the graph. That shows me that the breaking point for programs is problematic. The problem I see is that the computer programs inflexibility into taking to task idiocycronys with deciphering the code. The hardens had the human ability to work around all of the below using reasoning something that a computer program may have only if it’s programmed to seek it out.
A spelling errors
B code designer mistakes
C + instead of and
D filler
E the amount of multiplicity encoded by the author.

I would expect a few of the above can take any code over the graph that Glurk has shown.

So my question is .. By reducing the size of the code into smaller sections rather than trying to holy grail the code in one hit. Has this been tried. I understand the larger a code the better..but not if it is out of a programs capabilities.
Break it into halves, thirds, 40 letters 50,60, 80′,100 letters at a time.. Draw out a few words.. Surely the code must have some multiplicity weaknesses in parts. Then pen to paper and use the laptop attached to our shoulders. I did have this discussion with jarlve but don’t know of any results, got a bit busy with life for a while…

And I wish not to cross swords.
Cheers.

Thank you very much RTF for this pen and paper cipher! It probably will be of good long term use for me since it is reasonably similar to the Zodiac ciphers.

Mutiplicities:
Zodiac 408: 54 / 408 = 0.132
RTF 408: 64 / 408 = 0.156
Zodiac 340: 63 / 340 = 0.185
jroberson 405 (_pi transcript.): 99 / 405 = 0.244

When reducing the length of your cipher my solver (AZdecrypt) still comes up with reasonable solves up to around a multiplicity of 0.225. Maybe with a few adjustments my solver could be in range for jroberson’s cipher. Something for later.

@Mr lowe,

Reducing the length of the cipher, by excluding parts as you mention, only increases the multiplicity and therefore the difficulty of the cipher because: multiplicity = (unique number of symbols) divided by (total number of symbols).

Thank you very much RTF for this pen and paper cipher! It probably will be of good long term use for me since it is reasonably similar to the Zodiac ciphers.

Mutiplicities:
Zodiac 408: 54 / 408 = 0.132
RTF 408: 64 / 408 = 0.156
Zodiac 340: 63 / 340 = 0.185
jroberson 405 (_pi transcript.): 99 / 405 = 0.244

Thanks, Jarlve. And to Glurk for running this thru ZDK. And apologies for getting the multiplicity wrong – i included a couple of characters that went unused (in my 408) in my calculations.

In a while I’ll make a few observations and comments on the construction of my 408, and what it’s brought to mind about Zodiac’s ciphers. As a non-cipher guy myself, I hope they may have some validity or usefulness – esp. if it is considered that Z himself was merely dabbling in the art.

Okay. So – to cut to the chase – having created my own 408, I am now very much more inclined to believe what the crypto guys have been telling us i.e. that the 340 is either;

• Busy-work-creating gobbledygook … or[/*:m:e7f5rqz8]
• Only solvable with a key known to Z[/*:m:e7f5rqz8][/list:u:e7f5rqz8]

Us laymen have become accustomed to doubting experts, scientists and medics in recent decades – and for good reason sometimes. So, creating my own 408 has not only confirmed my faith in the crypto guys skills, findings and opinions; it has also illuminated me on how it is to construct such a cipher. Particularly… how laborious it is.

I could have saved a bit of time by coding something online using javascript or php to auto-generate assigning symbols to letters of the alphabet, and then generate a cipher from it.

But I thought it better to use a more 1969 no-tech approach, to get a Z feel for it.

After taking 5 minutes to type out a daffy Z-like text of 408 char length, it then took 2 hours to :-

• assign the symbols to the letters (into a Harden-esque worksheet), and then[/*:m:e7f5rqz8]
• cut and paste the symbols over each letter in the text. One by one. Ugh.[/*:m:e7f5rqz8][/list:u:e7f5rqz8]

Adding complexity to my 408:- Looking at the Hardens worksheet for Z408 I noticed that commonly used vowels were assigned MANY symbols (A=5, E=7, I=5). However, several consonants (B, C, G, K, M, P, U, V, W, X, Y etc.) were only assigned ONE symbol each.

I don’t know much but to me, if you can get a few consonants in place, these vowels can be interchangeable and still convey meaning (e.g. like if you put any vowels in *L*K*K*LL*NG, we can get it – like Insp. Clouseau saying “MINKEY” for “monkey” – same thing, but funnier).

So, I assigned an extra symbol to many of the consonants, and one less for some vowels. I also cycled my symbols in a more random fashion than Z.

After all this, I had faint hopes that this might fox ZDK – a little at least. …But, I’m glad to say it didn’t.

After slaving in my leaky basement for 2 hours, glurk leisurely paced the plush carpeting of his high-end penthouse pad, pasted my 408 into ZDK… and got a solution in less than a second (I guess).

So, any suspicion I had that a small but significant amount of added complexity might outsmart a cipher wizard was unfounded. (Maybe it would have taken Bettye Harden a week by hand, rather than a weekend perhaps???)

…AND FINALLY…

Given that Z’s methods were no doubt as, if not more, painstaking – using pen and paper (and maybe scrabble tiles with symbols on the back a la Gareth Penn), the fact that creating the cipher was such a pain in the neck, has suggested a couple of things about Z to me :-

• The 408 message he sent was perhaps a rough draft that he couldn’t be bothered to re-draft after an unexpectedly laborious session constructing it as a test cipher. Hence, it didn’t say anything meaningful or illuminating.[/*:m:e7f5rqz8]
• He probably couldn’t be bothered to go through the process again for the 340. And so has just provided us with gobbledygook, and endless “bussy-work”. The unsolvable nature of which would have “cheered him up” no end.[/*:m:e7f5rqz8][/list:u:e7f5rqz8]

But don’t stop trying with the 340. I’m often wrong.

 

He probably couldn’t be bothered to go through the process again for the 340. And so has just provided us with gobbledygook, and endless “bussy-work”. The unsolvable nature of which would have “cheered him up” no end.

First of all thanks for your write up on the matter.

Ciphers can be measured in various ways, one such measurement that I came up with is particulary good at discriminating between cyclic and random homophonic substitution. The 340 tests positive for cyclic, the chances of this occuring by making a random "gobbledygook" cipher – I guess – are very low. So this is telling me that he very probably went through the process again for the 340.

Both jroberson’s and your cipher test positive for cyclic just like the Zodiac ciphers. For which I am thankful to the both of you, there are not many cyclic ciphers around.

I say, just try it, create a random cipher as you say and share it with us.

Instead of stirring eachother up we could discuss something more fruitful. Like bringing forward ideas on how to improve our solvers ability to tackle higher multiplicity ciphers.

One straightforward idea is to include even longer ngrams together with a larger corpus. Another idea is to include another measurement that somehow is able to differentiate further between gibberish and meaningful text.

I really appreciate this sentiment. I admire all the very focused work, done by those who are cipher-inclined. While conflict and disagreement is to be expected, the outright derision does not seem to move us forward.

Sorry to be late to the party. I thought I’ll give it a try. High multiplicity is indeed a huge stumbling block, but I was able to use your hint (starts with "I like") to decipher the message almost completely. There are still a few "words" that I couldn’t figure out, probably because of transcription errors, or the high multiplicity, or both. My comments are in parenthesis. Your message is very funny, and I like it a lot more than Z408. 🙂

I LIKE EATING ICECREAM BECAUSE IT IS SO DELICUS IT IS MORE DELICIOUS THAN EATING SHSRBENOT (sherbet?) THE FROZEN FOOD AISLE BECAUSE ICECREAM IS THE MOST DELICIOUS GELATO OF ALL TO EAT SOMETHING SWEET GIVES ME THE MOST PLEASING EXPERENCE IT IS EVEN MORE PLEASING THAN SLURPING DOWN AWEATYSSHAKE (***milkshake?) THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAT WHEN I URINATE ALL OF ICECREAM I HAVE EATEN WILL BE REBORN AS LEMONADE I WILL NOT GIVE YOU THE NAME OF MY GROCER BECAUSE YOU WILL SLOW DOWN OR STOP MY EATING OF ICECREAM HAANCZRTESTDIA (filler?)

Congratz daikon, impressive! How did you do it? I’m guessing you filled in IT IS on row 3 and went from there?

I think I just got lucky. After I locked "ILIKE" in the beginning, I did a bunch of restarts and at one point I saw "ILIKEITWITHICECREAD" (with D) flash for a couple of second and then it was replaced with something else. I liked that idea, so I tried locking "ILIKEITWITHICECREAM" (with M), but it didn’t go anywhere. Than I remembered the beginning of Z408 and it hit me to try "ILIKEEATINGICECREAMBECAUSE", and then everything started falling into place fairly quickly. So I guess I should’ve mentioned that I used the second hint that this cipher was a parody on Z408 as well.

I think I just got lucky. After I locked "ILIKE" in the beginning, I did a bunch of restarts and at one point I saw "ILIKEITWITHICECREAD" (with D) flash for a couple of second and then it was replaced with something else. I liked that idea, so I tried locking "ILIKEITWITHICECREAM" (with M), but it didn’t go anywhere. Than I remembered the beginning of Z408 and it hit me to try "ILIKEEATINGICECREAMBECAUSE", and then everything started falling into place fairly quickly. So I guess I should’ve mentioned that I used the second hint that this cipher was a parody on Z408 as well.

And that’s how I think it will eventually unravel.. The computers will generate you a clue or two or three.. And from there the human touch will be needed for the the breakdown. The following was posted up recently by you guys and was discarded as gobbledygook. Probably is just crud.. I tweaked it (forced) and separated it and got this.. Ya ya it’s still gibberish but you computer generated it. And it my be jack sh-t but ya never know. Study it for a while .. Anyways the point is don’t try and get ya computers to do a 100% perfect solve . Not necessary in my most humble uneducated n0vice opinion .

Inafet/could/be/the/o
Neznt/the/laourcdth
Ncosezr/that/lets/in
Ieepg to/come/hzzade
Dmezsaoodhiuzirly
Eeagi/the/cold/i/felt
thzdserers/who/used
TheM/to/thzdnoszvem
orezsztaeinsclard
oestrozgnzhe/prince
rzay/hand/lonested h
er/stand/chtreuzini
samichzndhinstrea
Thing/the/rsusorazz
Cowboy/r/man/for/the/z
d/sum and/the/guts/she/
Astze bear/+/it/and/he/
Zzhaasasuhlity/the/
Diloarpandohnceas
Felinelisthelddrz

And that’s how I think it will eventually unravel..

Yeah, no, sorry, at this point it is quite clear that Z did something else when encoding Z340 besides classic homophonic substitution, so it’s not going to be that easy. The only reason jroberson’s J405 cipher wasn’t solved until now is due to its high multiplicity (i.e. too many separate symbols in the cipher for its length). Z340 does have higher multiplicity than the solved Z408, but nowhere near as high as jroberson’s J405, so multiplicity is *not* the reason Z340 remains unsolved so far. That should be considered a fact for all practical purposes. A lot of ciphers have been created with the same length as Z340 and sometimes with even higher multiplicity, and all of them have been solved quite quickly. I’ve actually tried creating my own uncrackable homophonic substitution cipher and while I succeeded in fooling purely automated cracking attempts, it still was solved rather quickly after a bit of manual analysis, independently by several people on this forum.

Though multiplicity could be an issue with various theories. For instance some symbols being polyalphabetic, some rows/columns being filler, etc.