I get where you are going with this but maybe not necessary so. I could see him putting his name in the my name cipher since it’s so few characters and almost crack proof and damn near hard to solve with frequency. In fact I bet Zodiac enjoyed that his name was in it knowing it won’t be cracked.

Agreed, Chappie. I think anyone expecting a smoking gun or for Zodiac to identify himself via cipher would be sorely disappointed. He clearly enjoyed offering help with the investigation and pulling the rug out from under everyone. In fact, I think that love of deception is a fundamental signature of Zodiac.

That said, I don’t think the efforts to solve the ciphers are useless at all. If nothing else, a solution would offer a window into what he was thinking about at the time and just possibly offer some unintended clew to his identity or motivation. Perhaps 40+ years of headbanging is exactly what Zodiac wanted and intended but wouldn’t it be something if someone offered a genuine solution at this point? I think it would and I hope it would really piss him off.

Agreed, Chappie. I think anyone expecting a smoking gun or for Zodiac to identify himself via cipher would be sorely disappointed. He clearly enjoyed offering help with the investigation and pulling the rug out from under everyone. In fact, I think that love of deception is a fundamental signature of Zodiac.

That said, I don’t think the efforts to solve the ciphers are useless at all. If nothing else, a solution would offer a window into what he was thinking about at the time and just possibly offer some unintended clew to his identity or motivation. Perhaps 40+ years of headbanging is exactly what Zodiac wanted and intended but wouldn’t it be something if someone offered a genuine solution at this point? I think it would and I hope it would really piss him off.

No please don’t misunderstand what I meant, I didn’t say or mean that peoples efforts to decode them are usless, its the info they may reveal that I suspect will prove usless. I bet the unsolved ciphers are likely to not even contain a message, or nothing that can be formed into coherent English anyway. I imagine Zodiac creating a dud and empty cipher, and finding it highly amusing and gratifying to watch all the people’s minds working overtime trying to ‘solve’ it. After all, this is the same man who said:

"I was leaving fake clews for the police to run all over town with, as one might say, I gave the cops som bussy work to do to keep them happy. I enjoy needling the blue pigs."

Understood, Chappie, and I agree. My gut feeling has always been that there ARE genuine messages included in the remaining three ciphers but they may be just too quirky or complicated to be solved without help from Z himself. That could be by design or just the result of Z upping the level of complexity, perhaps in response to his first cipher being cracked so easily.

My two ha’pence is that the Z13 is too short ever to have any sense made of it (which is conventional wisdom), that the Mt Diable code is pretty pointless (since if there’s a bomb it’s got to be on a VERY long timer), and that the 340 might contain another "Mission statement" kind of message, perhaps, rather than some revealing clews.
But at this point, I actually think we’re unllikely to ever know that.

The 408 has already told us quite a lot about its author though, I think. I’d suggest at minimum it reveals:
1) A level of sophistication in cryptography which would have been outside the realms of an ordinary "citizen", and which probably reflects military training.
2) That the occasional mistakes and mis-spellings in the letters are probably NOT faked, since there’s continuity in the ciphers and:
3) That the guy who wrote them used them to "up the ante" from his attempts for attention at Riverside. They’re a "unique selling point", if you will……

The Z13 is not too short to be Cracked. It’s MAD mascot, Alfred E. Neuman! Catchphrase "What, me worry?"

Why does Z even use that word, "cracked", if not as a clue? What’s he referring to? The 408 was already solved. Just my opinion… which I’d bet 1000 to 1 odds on!

As for the Z340, this was Z’s magnum opus, and he "corrects his mistake" rather than start over and make it perfect?!? Hmmm… What if the idea is to say, "Look, guys, you can tell this is real because I fixed my mistake!"

What might it contain? The author’s name encoded in a way that no one could figure out, that couldn’t be proven, that’s just for his own ego and amusement. Maybe nothing more. I’m not entirely convinced it’s a fake cryptogram, though, not even close. It’s just that backwards K bugging me lately.

The 408 has already told us quite a lot about its author though, I think. I’d suggest at minimum it reveals:
1) A level of sophistication in cryptography which would have been outside the realms of an ordinary "citizen", and which probably reflects military training.

Gonna ignore all of the things that I agree with you on, smithy, to focus on this. I just don’t see any indication of formal cryptography training in the 340 cipher or any other. Obviously Z upped the level of complexity in the 340 cipher but does that necessarily make it more "sophisticated"? I think it’s a reflection of his sophistication to some extent but not on his formal cipher training. Z apparently didn’t use any kind of known enciphering technique- otherwise the 340 would have been solved ages ago.

For all we know, Z may have just had the cipher read backwards by every 13th letter. It could be intended to read in a backwards spiral or (less likely, I think) be just a collection of symbols with a bunch of patterns that appear meaningful. All of these methods would prevent the 340 cipher from being solved by the ZKDekrypto and the best FBI analysts but would it be a reflection of Z’s formal cipher expertise? I can’t help returning to BTK’s unsolved code in which he used a victim’s "project name" as a keyword for solving it, making it totally inscrutable without his own inside knowledge. There are a million ways Z could have made the tantalizing 340 impenetrable without having any kind of formal cipher training whatsoever.

E., how unfair, ignoring the things you agree with and looking for a fight eh?
My comments on his level of sophistication perforce (good word?!) relate to the 408, and y’know, when I wrote "military" I was looking for something else to write. Perhaps "had some kind of formal training or had undertaken some study related to…" would have done it, including maths at a reasonable level, perhaps. I say that because of way he bothered to supress the normal character frequency in the 408, pretty well exactly assigning the right number of homophones to each character to flatten the statistics about as well as he could. (I say "about as well", before Dave O proves me wrong with some stats.)

Re: your second paragraph – well, sure! I’m not going to disagree with you on something neither of us know the answer to, so there.

Perhaps the "Impotence" of the Ciphers! Hmmm. Might be more appropriate.

Yes, I think the ciphers are just more bluffs (like his being one person, going on a kill rampage, taking out a school bus, being an escaped convict…) and busy work to keep us guessing while his trial grows cold.

Interesting posts. (1) The "ciphers" are devoid of meaning, deliberately. Very possible, it may be that the Z killer was methodical, but did not put too much effort into the code. (2) The ciphers do have some sort of meaning, hidden from public view, (like the "peace" sign[and button], with its own origin in nautical
semaphore) or (3) they are similar to a one-off use cryptographic pad, without the key, no solution . "Entropy"’s suggestion of reversals, inversions, and the like, could well prove right, after all G & S works employed a principle of "topsy-turvy"!
If such a principle was employed in certain communications, for example, the"undecoded" letters left over in one case could be reversed, and further broken down, in pairs. It could reveal turn-of-the-century SF and Northern CA (wireless)telegraphic call letters, pre-1910, before the federal government began to regulate radio emissions.

Perhaps the "Impotence" of the Ciphers! Hmmm. Might be more appropriate.

Yes. Although "pouring over" them is correct I think, since "poring over" them gets boring after a while.

Perhaps the "Impotence" of the Ciphers! Hmmm. Might be more appropriate.

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Right-o! Look for the motive(s), then the suspects, then relevant evidence!

I think Zodiac’s reference to ‘The Exorcist’ is uncanny because there’s a line in that film, spoken by Max von Sydow (Father Merrin) which can be applied to Zodiac specifically, at least in my opinion. The line comes as Father Karras is stating that there appears to be several demons present, to which Merrin cut’s him off "There is only one. The demon is a liar! Do not listen. He will also mix lies with the truth in order to confuse us."

I think that last sentence can be applied to Zodiac. He probably told one or two truths in amongst 4 or 5 lies to keep his audience guessing as to which was correct etc.