The z408’s solution contains many errors. Some are plaintext errors: forrest, experence, paradice and a missing word (all the ? I have killed). And some others are introduced because a symbol was used by the author to represent more than 1 letter in a context where the vast majority of symbols respectively map to a single letter. This means that if we strictly apply a mapping of 1 letter for 1 symbol, errors appear in the solution. Here are these 9 errors, in the order in which they appear in the z408 solution:
moat: “a” should be “s” (black triangle should be triangle with point)
dangertue: "t" should be "o" and "e" should be "s" (flat I should have been wavy I and Letter symbols mixup)
anamal: "a" should be "i" (black triangle should be white triangle)
moat: "a" should be "s" (black triangle should be triangle with point)
ia: "a" should be "s" (black triangle should be triangle with point)
thae: "e" should be "t" (Letter symbols mixup)
snd: "s" should be "a" (triangle with point should be black triangle)
sloi: "i" should be "w" (triangle should have been A)
The 2 simplest explanations to this I can think of are:
– either the author got confused with the 3 types of triangles, the 2 types of I/anchor and some other symbols and simply made errors in the encoding process, or
– the author willfully introduced some encoding errors and/or polyphonic symbols to complicate the deciphering process
I played with the idea that there could be another less likely but more fun explanation: what if these encoding errors were made intentionally but the objective was to hide a message in the z408. This hidden message would be composed of all the “correct” letters from the 9 cases above. Such a string of characters would look like this:
SOSISSTAW
By only adding some spacing and punctuation for emphasis (no caesar shifting, no anagramming, etc.), we can make this string look like this:
SOS, I, S. STAW
which looks like a request for help followed by an introduction. Coincidentally, the zodiac sent the Belli letter about 5 months later where he writes “please help me”.
Just for fun, I did a quick search to see if I could find real names that would match “S STAW” and found 2 in archived San Francisco directories in the appropriate time period (not writing their names here but they can easily be found through a quick manual search in online archives; also, I am not saying these people are/were the zodiac, only that their name fits this pattern).
I also found a few more in a US social security death index where the birth dates would contextually make sense.
Anyway, I just wanted to see if S STAW resembled a real name in the general zodiac timeframe and geographic location and it does. Also, STAW is in fact a complete surname but I couldn’t find anybody with that name in this context by doing a quick search.
_pi
good work. that’s exactly the type of thing i can see z doing. it’s simple and linear, and doesn’t require knowing the phases of the moon and the tides while chanting hymns under the din of incense (no offense to the theories that require this kind of balancing act, just i like simple theories). he says "in this cipher is my idenity" but i’ve always taken it that he’s full of sh*t. maybe you’re right though and he was literally saying he identity is IN the cipher.
ITA and by identity, he could mean something other than his name, ie. "I’m a ’38 (XXXVIII in Roman Numerals)" or "I am an American man"or some such simple clue!
He wrote a letter IIRC re. shooting a cop with a .38 which everyone assumed he meant a gun but he could have been referring to himself if he was born in that year. I am remembering the discussion somewhere about cars and Z could have been thinking of them and how they are identified by the year they are manufactured.
He indeed mixed – by purpose or accidentially, I guess latter – some ‘S’ with an ‘A’. A little while ago I had done this homophone sequence table to get a better overview of how he had used the symbols. The red markers are irregularities in his homophone sequences. The green area is where these sequences had been used in a repeating order, while towards the end of the cipher some sequences had been shuffled, obviously by purpose.
What I still wander is if the irregularities in the sequences had some sort of system behind it? If so, I could not yet figure out which one, also I think the sequences in the 340 might have a different structure as some homophones only appear in some areas (e.g. first 1/3) of the cipher.
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
Here is another way to visualize the cycles used for the symbols:
http://zodiackillerciphers.com/408/key.html#4
There you can see where the cycles appear in relation to the 3 main parts of the cipher and the last 18 symbols. In many cases, the cycles remain unbroken until the 3rd section of the cipher. Also, if you correct the various transcription errors, the cycles more strongly follow the same pattern of remaining unbroken until the 3rd section.
The cycles are present in the 340, but are not as predictable. Because of this, I’ve often wondered if some additional manipulative step would produce stronger cycles. In this way, you could test possible manipulations by measuring how strongly the resulting cycles appear.
Also, between part 2 and part 3, there seems to be a missing word or phrase ("AND ALL TH … E I HAVE KILLED"). I’m wondering if some missing cipher text has some relation to the broken cycles.
