Posted by: @coder1987

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It still makes me laugh that your proposed solution landed just south of my childhood Naval housing.  Crazy.  But I don’t dwell on it too much, some things truly are just a coincidence, even if improbable.

I see it was also pretty close to Alcatraz, which is a spot Oliv was very interested in as well.  So much so, they liked it more than LHR.

I suppose when we evaluate proposed solutions we ought really to make sure we stick just to the method of each one, else we’re at risk of getting things conflated and mixed up. As a good example, what differs between yours and DMWs – as to method – comes down essentially to your inclusion of a step involving projection (is that the right word?). Likewise with mine, as with DMWs. We just used the map, so it points where it points on the map. Would you think that is fair to say?

That said, I get the humour for you here. 

Anyway, that’s me done as I’m on a totally different timezone and need some sleep. You’ll need some sleep too, and then I guess it will be back to spamming again tomorrow?

Posted by: @shaqmeister

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Posted by: @coder1987

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It still makes me laugh that your proposed solution landed just south of my childhood Naval housing.  Crazy.  But I don’t dwell on it too much, some things truly are just a coincidence, even if improbable.

I see it was also pretty close to Alcatraz, which is a spot Oliv was very interested in as well.  So much so, they liked it more than LHR.

I suppose when we evaluate proposed solutions we ought really to make sure we stick just to the method of each one, else we’re at risk of getting things conflated and mixed up. As a good example, what differs between yours and DMWs – as to method – comes down essentially to your inclusion of a step involving projection (is that the right word?). Likewise with mine, as with DMWs. We just used the map, so it points where it points on the map. Would you think that is fair to say?

That said, I get the humour for you here. 

 

Well, DMW worked backwards with ALA in mind.  I tested 2 million alternative phrases and was able to derive a unique solution due to the ranking step.

The homophonic locks are quite restrictive.  And so these were important in the proposed solution.  They eliminate most valid phrases, leaving a small set from the original 2 million possibilities.  Version 3 is actually up to 8 million by adding some plausible, short middle connectors.

Oliv92 used basically the same method (because it is the right approach).  They were just missing the ranking step.  I am surprised they didn’t check the satellite imagery for their second candidate.

And yeah I became aware of the history of these forums after I came here.  I see it is past it’s prime but used to be the place to go for this.

I am pretty sure the experts don’t like me at this point.  It was their work that actually brought me here, as Youtube suggested the Z340 videos since it aligns with my personal interests.  I was already familiar with the case but not deeply, but I only saw the movie.  I live in California and grew up in the Bay, that is why I know but it.

I always felt Z32 was interesting because it came with the map.

As we’ve calmed down it seems we get along more than I realized.  It is too bad I was in such a frustrated state of mind.  But that kind of thing tends to pass, focus returns, and I just calm down again.  It is much better.

Still not a big fan of the situation but I will have to adapt and overcome….if I can.

Where are you from btw?  I will guess, the UK?  Watch me be wrong.

Also I did use AI as a co-pilot but that is standard in 2026.  Programmers have the highest adoption rate of any profession on using LLM’s, and so they are in the toolkit and did play a helpful role.  But there are no rules against this, and at the end of the day the method is solid and works, which is what matters.

I put a lot of personal time and effort into this regardless.  Even with the co-pilot at my disposal.  We all have access to the same tools, and it says something that I was the first to maybe do it right this way.  It was because of the way I used it.  I was using AI models before LLM’s.

Prompt engineering is a real discipline that measurably improves output quality.  I knew how to best utilize the tool that I had, and we all have.  It is a level playing field, no special advantage.

I encourage others to use the tools at their disposal to solve hard problems.  Solving this one was a public service.

It’s actually a really incredible story all around, but currently slept on.  There are many fascinating things about this cipher that were entirely unexpected.

The work is binary, it is either right or wrong.  The physical evidence makes it clear.  We can scratch our heads about it, but I am sure all experts agree that the only way to know is the scan.  That is just true.

Even though I declared victory, it is still open for debate.  Tempers have cooled, rationality has returned, the storm is over.

But technically this situation remains unresolved.  It is still a standoff.  But as it goes on I begin to think the falsification just isn’t going to come.  Great, that means I was right.

We have potential evidence in this spot, can’t be ignored.  Too (potentially) important to overlook.  It was clear to me the moment I checked the coordinates, and has been ever since.  There was never any doubt on my end but I realize others didn’t have the same experience.

As you see, when you had been staring at the ciphertext long enough, and then you see the landmark, you instinctively know what you are looking at right away, without quite being able to understand why it is so striking.  Then you overlay the ciphertext triangle and you realize why.

Posted by: @coder1987

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Even though I declared victory, it is still open for debate.  Tempers have cooled, rationality has returned, the storm is over.

But technically this situation remains unresolved.  It is still a standoff.  But as it goes on I begin to think the falsification just isn’t going to come.  Great, that means I was right.

It’s good to hear that you have brought yourself to a place where your storm has passed. Perhaps part of the task for you now is holding onto that achievement. And I offer that only because there are going to be further challenges ahead for you.

As we mentioned previously, some proposed solutions have, for whatever reason, been brought out into the public gaze and have been subjected to expert scrutiny and even debate. That said, by far the majority – and there will have been many – have not done so. All the same, they all group together into a whole to the extent that none has incurred the ultimate rejection through having been falsified in debate. As the ‘experts’ would collectively say, there is effectively no criteria of final falsification of any proposal that doesn’t otherwise breach the constraints of the cipher itself. So then, by your reasoning in the second part above, that’s a lot of people who equally have every reason to be sitting right now saying to themselves “Great, that means I was right,” and you wouldn’t have any means of challenging such a multitude of assertions if you are offering this as a standard of judgement of your own work. Beyond this even, you seek debate, only I can’t imagine that there would be anyone, expert or otherwise, who would have an interest in facing a challenge that started with “I declare victory, fight me anyway.” Just as one example, as a non-expert, I certainly wouldn’t. If you want an honest level of debate, it would be advisable to soften, or at least not directly state in this way, your request. Otherwise silence is pretty much assured to be the common response, and neither you nor me would find that silence easy to deal with.

Overall, though, being in this better place will now allow you clearer thoughts going forward.

Posted by: @coder1987

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IN THREE AND THREE EIGHTHS RADIANS TEN is the solution to Z32. Discovered by David Stampher in December 2025, who found the triangle landmark by Lake Herman Road, solving the cipher after 55 years.

Run the code:     https://github.com/dstampher/zodiac-z32-cipher

Read the paper:    https://zenodo.org/records/18645227

It has been a pleasure being of service.

Here is how you can prove it wrong, this is an open challenge to all readers.  All experts are welcome to challenge this proposed solution.  Here is how you can prove it wrong:

Falsification Criteria

In the interest of scientific rigor, we present explicit criteria by which the proposed solution can be objectively tested and potentially falsified. These are intended to be concrete and non-subjective—
not matters of interpretation or feeling, but measurable outcomes.

1. Subsurface survey. If ground-penetrating radar at the triangular anomaly reveals no sub-surface disturbance (no excavation, no backfill, no anomalous density contrast), this would substantially weaken the physical evidence line. Conversely, confirmation of a deliberate excavation basin would constitute strong corroboration.

2. Temporal dating. If the triangular feature can be dated—through soil stratigraphy, den-drochronology of vegetation, or other forensic methods—to a period outside the Zodiac’s known active period of 1968–1970 (e.g., demonstrably post-1975 or pre-1965), this would weaken the
temporal coincidence argument. Conversely, dating the feature to within this narrow window would strengthen it considerably. The 1964–1982 creation window established by available aerial imagery is broad; forensic dating methods could narrow this significantly.

3. Alternative plaintext. If an alternative candidate plaintext is identified that (a) satisfies all three constraints (length, locks, bounds), (b) ranks higher than the proposed solution by proximity to a known crime scene, and (c) is corroborated by independent physical or geo-metric evidence at its decoded coordinates, this would supersede the proposed solution. The solver code and data are public; any researcher can verify that no such candidate currently exists in the enumerated space. We note that any proposed alternative must include physical corroboration at the decoded site: the Zodiac’s explicit instruction to “dig it up” implies physical disturbance of the ground, and digging leaves detectable evidence—subsurface anomalies visible to ground-penetrating radar, soil compaction differences, or crop marks visible in aerial imagery. An alternative candidate whose decoded coordinates show no such physical evidence would not meet this criterion.

4. Framework non-uniqueness. We have tested this criterion directly. A grid search of 7,676 alternative anchor points at 0.02° resolution across the Bay Area (37.3°–38.8°N, 121.0°–123.0°W) was conducted, scoring each point on a composite metric combining (a) the sum of angular errors between each crime scene’s magnetic bearing and its nearest whole clock-hour position, and (b) the deviation of the Presidio Heights–Blue Rock Springs angular separation from 60°. Mt. Diablo ranks 4th of 7,676 tested points (top 0.05%), with only 3 points scoring better on the composite. The three better-scoring points lie 14.3–43.1 miles from Mt. Diablo and lack the cartographic, historical, and navigational significance that make Mt. Diablo the natural anchor: it is the origin of the Mount Diablo Meridian and Base Line (the reference coordinate system for California land surveys since 1851), the site of the Eye of Diablo aerial navigation beacon, and the point explicitly marked by the Zodiac on his map. The clock-face framework is not unique to Mt. Diablo in a strict mathematical sense, but Mt. Diablo is among the strongest anchor points in the region, and it is the only one with independent evidentiary support from the Zodiac’s own materials.

5. Agricultural provenance. If the triangular feature can be documented as a known agricultural or civil-engineering structure with a recorded construction date and purpose (e.g., a drainage basin in county engineering records), this would provide an alternative explanation
for its presence.

None of these criteria have been met in four months!. We invite independent researchers to test them.

The entire premise of your challenge here is wrong. Proposed solutions do not get falsified, they get verified. It’s almost like you’re suggesting that any proposed solution is necessarily correct until it’s proven to be incorrect, but that is backwards and wrong. Also, my guess is that you only want your proposed solution to be given the benefit of being deemed correct, unless it can be shown to be incorrect. That’s just my guess though.

My non-expert opinion is that the only way your proposed solution would be widely accepted as being valid is if a physical bomb is found at that location; a physical bomb that looks like it’s been there for over half a century. However, if the area were to be searched, and nothing were to be found, it would not mean that your solution is not valid. It may still be the correct solution, I just personally do not see how it could ever be proven to be correct if nothing is found there.

I do not understand your insistence that the triangle anomaly was necessarily created by Zodiac. The triangle could have been there for the past 500 years. It makes no difference. Perhaps Zodiac just knew it was there somehow, and chose to call out that location as the solution to his cipher. I would even go as far as to say that if the triangle anomaly first appears after Z32 was sent, your proposed solution could still be correct. Maybe the connection you’ve made between the triangle symbols used in the ciphers, and the triangle anomaly you’ve found are just coincidence, but your proposed solution is still actually correct. I admit this would be highly improbable, but still possible.

I do not not understand or agree with your belief that because the triangle anomaly you’ve found is within close proximity to the Lake Herman Road murders, that it somehow makes your proposed solution more likely to be correct than other proposed solutions. The solution to Z32 could call out a completely different location that isn’t as close to any of the known crime scenes. The close proximity of the triangle to LHR has no bearing on the validity of your proposed solution.

I admit that I’m not a programmer, and don’t fully understand your methodology for arriving at your proposed solution. I cannot “falsify” your proposed solution, and I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to verify it, or even give a serious opinion on whether or not it can be verified, but if you’re bringing the same poor reasoning and inflexible thinking to your coding methodology (or whatever you’d call it, I don’t even know honestly) that you’ve seemed to bring to the analysis of the proposed solution that you’ve arrived at, then my belief is that your proposed solution is almost certainly incorrect.

If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. And I’ll accept that. Good luck to you, and if you’re right maybe I’ll get to see you on TV one day, or visit the Smithsonian where I can gaze admirably and enviously at your incredible ebay laptop.

I think I’m done reading this thread now. It’s just the same old stuff over and over again.

Will be coming back to these responses a bit later, particularly @Irvine

Just putting this as a placeholder for now.  I am finalizing the third version of my whitepaper, working on the images.  I don’t really want to debate the solution at the present moment because I have stalled out on getting this next version out.  The debating has distracted my focus from where it should be, finishing the next version of the work and making my Youtube videos to inform the public.

Once it is released I will be back in “debate mode” with an even better paper.  I hope by tomorrow, it has been hard to get the last one out.

Am also due for surgery and have a family member in poor health at the moment, in addition to everything else going on the world.

So sitting around with this triangle, getting ignored by the experts, has been beyond difficult.

All of the experts mostly just want to debunk it and give the silent treatment, none have really taken the landmark seriously or indicated to me that they do.  They don’t want to give positive feedback because it counts as an endorsement, I guess.  Good, this landmark should be scanned….

Anyways back to work.  I will respond to you later @Irvine, I just need to keep my energy focused elsewhere at the moment so I can finish this work.

Posted by: @coder1987

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All of the experts mostly just want to debunk it and give the silent treatment, none have really taken the landmark seriously or indicated to me that they do.

Unfortunately for us wannabe solvers, were I even to count myself as one, is that this is precisely what the ‘experts’ are qualified, and permitted, to do. That’s what makes them experts in the first place, isn’t it?

Posted by: @shaqmeister

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Posted by: @coder1987

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All of the experts mostly just want to debunk it and give the silent treatment, none have really taken the landmark seriously or indicated to me that they do.

Unfortunately for us wannabe solvers, were I even to count myself as one, is that this is precisely what the ‘experts’ are qualified, and permitted, to do. That’s what makes them experts in the first place, isn’t it?

Yeah I should be clear no expert has debunked anything in four months, which is why I am here still talking about it.

@Irvine I have decided when people want to state their subjective opinion about it being wrong in their minds, I will just say “you are entitled to your opinion, the work has not been falsified by an expert in four months”, which is a true statement.  And it is not from lack of trying, I’ve been trying to get eyes on it for this purpose.

I have gotten into enough silly, unhelpful arguments with people that have just drained me.  I should have just said “You are entitled to your opinion”, while reminding the scan determines if it is right or wrong.

The scan really supersedes any expert opinion as physical evidence is indisputable.  A small percentage would still object even then.  That is fine, I would find it funny to object if they actually found something.  If there is a hit then I’ve been correct since December, but obviously I don’t have X-ray vision to know this.  Hence, the scan.

From day one I was trying to help move the case forward by solving this cipher and I am pretty sure I did that four months ago.  Everything else is just extra credit homework.  The paper isn’t even needed, but it adds value as that was supplemental analysis that is related and was discovered after decryption.

And as a reminder, I am not stating with certainty that anything is buried there at all. 

I mentioned that very early on, and that has always been my perspective.  No clue, so scan it.

I am stating with certainty that I solve Z32 in December, until proven otherwise.  There will never be a better plaintext/method presented for this cipher, this is the optimal selection, and I have done it.

There is a high degree of confidence that the triangle that I (David Stampher) found in December 2025 is Zodiac in origin.  It can be proven if the landmark is examined by the right experts.  The experts have been slow, but I pointed them in the right direction.