Transferring and editing some of the most interesting and relevant parts of a good thread entitled Z340 DISSECTED by TRAVELLER1ST IMO the only thing Chris Farmer ever cracked was an egg , but aside from that, this is a very interesting and thought provoking thread.

TRAVELLER1ST: I was reading Chris Farmers work on the "Scorpion Code" and how he discovered that it consisted of sequences of symbols and went on to crack it. For a long time I’ve viewed some of Zodiac’s symbol choices as being like that. I don’t think that the Z340 is as simple as finding a sequence in the symbols but given that Zodiac does goes through what I would call a logical system for choosing symbols, I think it’s worth exploring the choices he made and if that can give us a clue to something, to anything.

The first 26 symbols are a given A-Z and Zodiac uses them. The then moves onto a reversal of those symbols to create a second batch. Next comes the standard geometric shapes and they are padded out with variations of themselves. Lastly we have the weird capital I shape with the dot on either side and then the zodiac symbol. Now I’ve listed those last 3 symbols separately because following from the shape progression, that I’m posting here as a starting point, I’m not sure they follow on at this point so they may be something separate.

When I say explore this I mean just that, an investigation of what we can gleam from the use of symbols and try and spot some sort of logic in the choices.

To give you an example, here’s one of my initial lines of thinking on it. In regards to the A-Z part of the cipher alphabet there are 16 of those that do not have variations. Now, did he intend for every symbol in the A-Z cipherbet to have a variation or even several variations? No idea. Let’s say he did. Where then are the missing symbols? How about the + symbols? so we assume that there are 16 additional symbols to be created from 16 of the plus symbols leaving 9 + symbols. I got all excited at this point because I thought, hold on, we’ve added 16 extra symbols using the +’s and thus removed them so we’ve added 16 but removed 1, the + which means we’re down to 62 symbols plus 16 which = 78 – exactly the length of 3 alphabets as opposed to the 2.6 alphabets we currently have. Of course I had forgotten about the 9 +’s left over so not only had I not actually reduced the initial key to 62 characters but there were potentially 8 other character I hadn’t accounted for or at least 1 with that pesky + and 9 occurrences of it. But that’s to give you an idea of what sort of things you can ponder with just a bunch of shapes in front of you.

I was also trying to be mindful of whether or not ZKD would have picked up on any theories I’ve gone through in my head. Sometimes the answer was yes but for things like the example above I wasn’t sure. If there was a missing 3 or even fourth alphabet or just 0.6 of one missing or even hidden within the cipher, would it matter to ZKD or would it throw it off if the pluses were extra symbols? Don’t know. Does only using 63 symbols (2.6 full alphabets) mean anything? Don’t know that either. Hopefully someone might if it does.

So here it is. Dissected and separated out into a starting point for an order. I say starting point because take the p and the V for example. The P has a reverse P but it also has a filled in P. The V has no alternative version of itself but it potentially has 3 variations from the right hand geometric shapes column. Should those variations on the V all be under the V or maybe just one of the variations. Should the filled in P be in the right hand column and would that make it more likely to be an odd symbol in the sequence like the cap I thing and the Zodiac symbol Guess what, don’t know lol. I also don’t know if any of this or all of it has been covered before or if none of this stuff would matter anyway when it comes to ZKD.

The shorter version of that would have been – Z340 symbols placed in a proposed order – please discuss

Here I have ordered the symbols in descending order according, first, by the number of times they appear in the cipher then with that alphabetically alternating both normals and reversals, then finally the symbols in the order that matched my geometric progression thoughts. Just in-case someone see’s something in it.

Don’t know if this has anything to do with the topic of this thread, but I´ll share a thought I had for a long time:

I believe that the zodiac symbol (crossed circle) used by Zodiac in his 340 ciphers might be an I (i)

Why do I think that?

Because, due to Zodiac’s apparent narcissism I belive that Zodiac perceived himself as the center of the universe.

In astrology "Zodiac" even symbolizes the center of the universe, and is called ‘The Sign of the Zodiac"

So, IMO it would be logical for Zodiac to use the Zodiac symbol (crossed circle) for the letter "I", in the meaning of "me"

Additionally, in the alphabet I(i) is the 9th letter, and in the 340 cipher there are 9 "I"’s

And I also believe some Zodiac researchers have had suspected that Zodiac was kind of obsessed by the number 9, can´t remember HOW or WHY that is, maybe someone knows and could post about it?

I know Seagull is one of the researchers that believe Zodiac had a thing for number 9:

http://zodiackiller.21.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=3220

I know this might very well be just a total blind end, and if so, please just skip it:)

There is something about 9 that I came across in doing this but I’ll prob take some time and read Seagull’s and others thoughts on it. For me personally it’s mathemagic at this point, I think it had to do with alphabets (26) and/or differences between various amounts of various things but I do remember 9 figuring at one point in my dreamings and imaginings. That’s why I’m poking at the codes like this to see if anything shakes loose.

Here’s the 408 dissected. This one was weird (for me anyway). It seemed to take forever to separate even though there are less symbols. At times I was surprised that I’d finished doing a symbol but despite that it still seemed a lot slower going than the 340. Maybe I was just getting dissecting fatigue or the extra characters made up for less symbols.

There did seem to be some correlation between where the symbols fell in a logical order and which cipher they were used on ie there seemed to be groups that were used more heavily in each of the ciphers in order. Or at least I have a vague notion of thinking that as I was cutting n pasting tiny squares one at time at 4 in the morning.

Anywho here it is. I’ll do another one later and put them in descending order as with the 340.

Ok so here’s some unusualness to throw into the mix – just in-case

I was watching Rosemary’s Baby. Trying to work my way through horror films of the time on the chance that Zodiac watched them. Secretly I was hoping for the batwing to turn up as some sort of bespoke satanic symbol. No such luck. There was however a bit where Mia Farrow is faffing around with scrabble tiles to make anagrams. I suddenly though, oh, letters with numbers associated with them as part of the scoring system.

Thought I’d have a look. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_l … tributions

Lots of lovely letters and numbers and in many different languages. It’s too early / late to come find anything meaningful but I did spot something that might be interesting. Some of the variations used in his ciphers do turn up in the other languages.

Here’s this little guy for example. From the 408 and all on his own.

I had stuck it in below the L as an upside L but the stroke extending beyond the descender bothered me. I wasn’t sure if it was a mistake but why weren’t the normal L’s and reversed L’s like that also if it was maybe part of a style and how do you make a mistake on 1 symbol. So if it wasn’t a mistake what was it.

Whilst scrolling through the scrabble tables in different languages it jumped out at me has I hit the Hebrew Language. It might be a Dalet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daleth

Check out the orthographic variations. It could well be a Dalet and he just randomly picked it as one of his symbols but there’s also others or at least one other in the Hebrew.

Basically I was wondering if this angle had been looked at. Is there anything in the scrabble distribution tables and scoring system that might correlate to something in the ciphers?

I’m posting this as an illustration of how you can get lots of compelling words in the 340 rather than a proposed partial solution. It is one of my many attempts at it in ZDK using my (and probably others) approach of letting it run on the 340 uniplus file and then as soon as I see words or groups of words that make sense and then I start locking them and unlocking them and completing some and letting it keep running to see what it produces, if anything.

The reason I’m saying it’s not a partial solution is because I have produced many of these, all with a different, but equally compelling, "story" emerging. I’m basically saying, isn’t this really interesting, well no it’s not because when treating the 340 a homophonic sub and the nature of it’s construction, these partials can be produced all day long to show something that looks really good but doesn’t mean anything because there are too many other possibilities. That and the fact that it’s a partial and not complete speaks for itself.

Even if it were likely that these could be part of a correct solution there’s no way to know until you have a complete solution.

I started with uniplus 340 and as something appeared I would lock it if it was interesting enough. I think this one started with what looked like "forced the queen back" then probably the "io" in presidio and I plugged that in then ZKD came up with cabbie on it’s own and possibly even some of the letters from heights. The first like I can’t remember but it came in pretty close to toschi the copedo and then copoffee. I just reduced it to cop. Sonoma was something like onona maybe. "The shame is" was as is.

SMITHY:

All good stuff…..
Basically what I’m saying as well is….if I were to hand you a print out of the symbol chart at the start of the thread and told you that these were the symbols you were to use – how would YOU organise them into a cipher table?

I think my 408 key (cipher table?) would nowadays look like this. (With apologies to wiki in respect to the frequency distribution graphic lift, and the unknown supplier of the beautiful vertical original of this key, which I have lazily twisted thru 90 degrees, in part).

If I was to do the same for the 340, my key might look a bit like this, if I thought the pluses represented single occurences of each letter used (which I don’t, frankly.) Taller peaks on the silhouette of distribution, to reflect the Z. "trying to make it harder to solve":

Or perhaps like this, maybe:

If I thought the pluses were used in the key in some order against single characters (which I don’t either, frankly).
If the pluses were indeed "regularly used" somehow, how useful they would be. Oh well. *sigh*

I hope this makes some sense.

Please can you just copy the correct symbols from the 340 into the correct locations for me on these pillars Trav?
If you do those 80-something cut and pastes, we can all move on.

This last version (tries to) show the distribution and the pluses, but doesn’t have a representation of the characters like the triangles of the 408, which have been multiply assigned in the 340. Probably.

"Pick the bones out of that" as they say.

In respect to your points about shapes, points etc. in the symbols, I’m very sad to say I haven’t a thought in my head for you in respect to that. :no:

DORANCHAK:

and of course the possibility that the Z13 was a clue to the 340

I can’t help but think they are connected in some way, because of the way he worded the beginning of the 4/20/1970 letter:

"By the way, have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is ______."

It’s almost like he was giving an example. Or maybe it was just a continuation of the original tease that his name could be found in the 408.