* They are seriously just making shit up

Can I up-vote your comment. I really want to, LOL.

Yeah, they didn’t solve the 340. I really wanted to like this show too. I don’t blame any of the people here who are part of it.
All the cipher folks on the show are the real deal as well, but the producers of the series, well, it all comes back to them.

-glurk

* They are seriously just making shit up

Can I up-vote your comment. I really want to, LOL.

Yeah, they didn’t solve the 340. I really wanted to like this show too. I don’t blame any of the people here who are part of it.
All the cipher folks on the show are the real deal as well, but the producers of the series, well, it all comes back to them.

-glurk

Well said. Sorry if my first post came out mean.

There are professionals on the show, but the hosts & producers are not.

Their "proof" could be disproved even more, but I don’t feel it makes sense to spend more time on this.

Ha, strangely enough I had just began completing the cipher with the "history channel key" right before you posted this.

This is what I came up with (below), but yours was quite a bit better.

I also found this Picture from when I initially started working on the cipher…

I have come an incredibly long way from when I first made the photo above…

I generally refuse to discuss my work with ciphers. (Not just the zodiac ciphers, but any ciphers I am working with) but if I had to discuss anything on the topic it would be:

working with Trithemius cipher techniques, as well as Vigenère cipher techniques.

Below is some text generated with a trithemius cipher:

I bo dgyahtui dgedgyjww ncwq mme ph bsz cha jlwq gc qhvsd ncep andf!

Fun stuff.

Regardless, I do not feel the z cipher has been cracked…

After reading the episode name and description, they’ll look awfully stupid and/or like liars if they didn’t. They repeatedly say they cracked it.

imo it’s a non-solution, rubbish so to say..sometimes they use the + symbol as a ‘G’, sometimes as an ‘F’. Same with the reverse p symbol..and those are amongst the most frequent homophones. Nothing there imo.

Such things are the reasons why I had chosen my profile pic..

Meanwhile finding 8-letter words in 11-symbol-strings, based on frequent overlapping trigrams (IoFBc) etc..

QT

Yeah, they didn’t solve the 340. I really wanted to like this show too. I don’t blame any of the people here who are part of it.
All the cipher folks on the show are the real deal as well, but the producers of the series, well, it all comes back to them.
-glurk

Totally agree, but that is why this is so upsetting. That level of talent, and they resort to a bogus solution?

*The episode has not aired, but I hope they don’t promote a bogus solution…

I believe they did indeed crack part of it. I’m quite surprised.

wow,, what a disappointment.

1. Several cipher symbols deciphered to 2 letters of the alphabet, one even a question mark as the second. ( I was under the impression this characteristic was the biggest flag of them all when it comes to a forced solution).

2. A few symbols left blank. He must have had to have gone for a 3rd letter of the alphabet to force something because either of the 2 he used previously for those particular symbols would have made it even less appealing.

3. A few times a letter is placed in between the columns to make it seem like it made sense. (P)IG, CHANG(E), GAM(E).

4. The word IN is deciphered as NI, MY and MI.

I am assuming the forcing was getting too tough from the end of the partial presented so it was declared gibberish until the name down below which doesn’t come out as it is deciphered unless 2 letters of the alphabet are used for some of the symbols.

Obviously I am no expert, don’t post that much nor contribute much of anything to this site but I can see this is totally bogus and has attributes that many previous false solutions are dismantled for having.

I seriously can not believe Knight and Bauer are running with this as being even a proposed solution. I say that because I have a great amount of respect for the members of the code team and the work they have done over the years. This just baffles me.

I am willing to wager that not one single serious cipher person on this site thinks the proposed solution by Bauer is even remotely accurate. Dave included even though he was on the show.

I mean seriously, how much were these guys paid to push this nonsense on the show?

I feel insulted

The best I have ever been able to do, using Orenchak’s webtoy is by not solving + and letting that be whatever letter makes a word, by doing that I was able to come up with various solutions all of which were imperfect, with some giberish scattered throughout. I also have tried to channel his "way of speaking" to come up with a few key words, like many many others, ultimately to no avail.

And really, this is all the fellow in the show did — you can get first three lines to read a myriad of words, the trick is to get words to appear throughout the 340, and what this guy did in the episode is weak, and silly even, taking it to the other "experts?"

No explanation with methodology! Discredits the entire 5 episodes….

I believe they did indeed crack part of it. I’m quite surprised.

Just trying to follow along in the show, they make four mistakes on line three, after that it is just like winning in jigsaw puzzle by using a hacksaw.

This is the message we get if we follow the decoding rules they lay out, see how it breaks already on third line. Somehow they presented 8 "deciphered" rows of text.

The four errors on line 3:
– Cipher symbol "B" is said to mean "B", when it meant "H" on line 2.
– Cipher symbol "6" is said to mean "B", when it meant "O" on line 1.
– Cipher symbol "circle with a vertical line" is said to mean "B", when it meant "T" on line 2.
– Cipher symbol "H" is said to mean "M", when it meant "H" on line 1.

Their explanation is that sometimes the cipher letters should be read as similary-looking to the intended symbol.
Some other times it should be read literally, and other times it is a non-similar looking match.
This is not a real cipher system, so if for some reason this really would be Z:s real method I don’t think it can be cracked / proven.

To give them some credit, the guy who "cracked" it, says the "words just appear", so he just put in some words that he thought zodiac would say.

Now, this is what they claim it would decode to:

The only show with an "actual" "Artificial Intelligence".

OMG… this even got "me" to crawl out of the woodwork… Ha
If I’d known that you are allowed to plug anything you want into the
first 26 characters, squeegee some letters around, add and
deduct a few, and declare half of the cipher gibberish…
Gosh, I would have solved it myself yesterday,
instead of doing my nails.

CP

(I wanted to like it too!)

My best guess would be that he did find a legitimate solution, I want to run the "gibberish letters" of that solution through a trithemius cipher or Vigenère cipher cracking program.
https://www.dcode.fr/tools-list

I think that they may have only found the simplest part of the code (if even that)

Obviously there are several codes created by several techniques all mixed into a single sheet of text.

You have to separate out each code from the "noise", and what is "noise" in one code may be the heart of another, its several codes interlocking into one sheet.

I think they may have found the simplest piece of it, but I believe there is more information created using other coding methods.

You must first find the section needed, then determine the method used to code it, then crack it, and you must do this several times.