This is just to explore an idea, and to see what others think.
I’m not aware of having seen the following idea considered before, although it probably has. In any case, what strikes me about the ‘Pines’ card has less to do with any possible connection (as often made) between much of the text and the disappearance of Donna Lass. Rather, I have recently become more interested in the physical aspects of the card itself and what these might suggest.
Although the ’13-hole’ card was, as its name suggests, adorned with its holes each to represent an alleged victim, Zodiac’s use of the hole punch on this card appears to be put to some other purpose. Of note, in this regard, is the single hole near the top-right corner when looking at the ‘Pines at Incline’ image, and the use of the punch to crimp around the edges of the card. As to the location of the hole itself, I couldn’t help thinking of it in terms of what sounds like the ‘invitation’ on the card to "peek through the pines." I’m getting ahead of myself here, but the fact that, on the other side of the card, what I will call the ‘peek-hole’ cuts cleanly the circle of the zodiac symbol drawn there; this suggests to me the idea that we should peek though this aperture – which is indeed, as on the graphic, looking "through the pines" – to ‘see’ The Zodiac beyond.
In short, it was my thought that maybe the intention of the ‘Pines’ card was to be used as an overlay of some sort, to be applied in some or other specific manner so that we are drawn to see something specific beyond, and perhaps the identity of The Zodiac. And this, in turn, brought the very neatly produced Z340 cipher to mind.
Obtaining photos of the card and the cipher that contain the scale markers, I made the experiment of scaling them together in a single image, here:
As can be seen, I then constructed a rough ‘skeleton’ overlay marking the edge of the card and the relative location of the peek-hole. Removing the image of the card and leaving just the overlay, I was encouraged to find that:
[list=1]
The question then was where to try locating the card, and to what purpose.
Again, to avoid going through all the possible thoughts I had around this, I was pretty soon thinking about what are, I believe, commonly referred to as the two ‘trigram pivots’ that appear in the Z340 ciphertext, and whether the function of these could actually be to serve as locators for the ‘Pines’ card as overlay. Experimentation, then, through applying the overlay in sequence to the two pivots at the bottom right-hand corner of the card, internally to their inner angles (i.e. not overlapping the pivots) permitted me to "peek through the pines" and note the two symbols seen in turn. The results are shown (schematically) in the image below:
The result obtained, then, was to single out two symbols from the ciphertext of Z340 – ‘l’ and ‘C’ (taking ‘l’ to represent a backwards ‘L’).
But, so what? All that has been achieved is to have our attention drawn to two symbols that have, it would seem, no useful meaning in the absence of a key for the Z340, which has yet to be attained.
Or is that actually the case?
cont…
“This isn’t right! It’s not even wrong!”—Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958)
…cont
Having pursued a not-illogical ‘function’, if you like, for the somewhat improbable appearance (randomly) of the two pivots in the ciphertext, my attention was next drawn to another pair of ‘pivot-like’ features that appear – the two so-called ‘box corners’. Their location is as in the following figure, where they are highlighted in blue.
Oddly, these have long appeared to me to appear very much like the crop or ‘bleed’ marks that you see in printing and, as suggestive of ‘corners’, I thought about how they could be translated to the actual corners of the ciphertext, where their appearance hinted (to me) they belong. In seeking a way to achieve this, it was my purpose to do so only in a manner that seemed 1.) the most direct and 2.) the most intuitively logical. In this regard, it was noted how, unlike the two pivots, the two box corners faced in opposite directions such that their open angles each faced an opposing corner. Further, this very alignment is such that it permits both to be translated to the relevant faced corner, in accordance with the double criteria of directness and logical intuitiveness, through:
[list=1]
The result is as follows:
Note how this procedure was such as not to disturb the two trigram pivots.
Apply the ‘Pines’ overlay again, and now we get:
The process of overlay now picks out the two symbols ‘c’ and ‘C’ (where ‘c’ represents a backwards ‘C’). The first has changed, the second is as before.
But, is that all we’ve got?
Looking at the bottom right-hand corner, we see that the process of bringing the box corner to the cipher corner here has also brought these same two symbols, ‘c’ and ‘C’, down onto the bottom row of the cipher. But, not just that … the process has relocated these two symbols in the one place in the text where we might be inclined to suggest a possible partial decoding – into what is evident immediately on first seeing the Z340 cipher, and largely dismissed for being too obvious – into the body of the near-‘ZODIAC’ coincident with the last two symbols.
Is it, then, possible that we have, indeed, been led to "peek" at the identity of The Zodiac as someone having the initials ‘AC’?
“This isn’t right! It’s not even wrong!”—Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958)
I don’t hate the overlay theory, but the time lapse between the 340 and the Pines card makes it a bit hard to swallow. Also this particular application of the theory seems too obscure. If it was meant to be an overlay then I think it would be a simple one. It could be meant to overlay any one of the letters, or folded to overlay itself. The permutations are endless, so it’s usage would need to be simple to validate any solution.
Is it, then, possible that we have, indeed, been led to "peek" at the identity of The Zodiac as someone having the initials ‘AC’?
The first name I think of is Aleister Crowley as an occult reference.
