Huh. It does seem remarkable.

I wonder if as a test of significance, if you viewed the arrangement as having "periodic boundary conditions" (a concept which would be familiar to a mathematics professor like Ted K), how many such words could be found with the freedom to read in any direction with each new letter, and this level of freedom about how to interpret each symbol as a letter. Can you pull all sorts of "messages" out of it this way, or is this one unusually coherent?

Kaczynski resigned as professor from UC on June 30, 1969. The 340 was received July 31, 1969.

Kaczynski’s PhD dissertation begins "Let H denote the upper-half plane". This refers to a Cartesian coordinate system where y > 0. People have long recognized that the 340 seems to have a quadrant structure suggested by some key symbols and their placements, and also perhaps by fold marks in the paper itself. Just though it an interesting idea that the Cartesian plane was something deeply embedded in Kaczynski’s mind as the foundation of his mathematical research, and the 340 seems to suggest such a structure in the author’s mind.

I’d also note that the second sentence in Kaczynski’s dissertation defines the mathematical concept of an arc. The zodiac symbol itself… wow.

And he also published articles about functions defined on the unit disc of the complex plane. What does that look like if drawn? *Precisely the zodiac killer’s symbol*.

https://homepages.rpi.edu/~bulloj/tjk/tjk2.html
"Let D denote the unit disk |z| < 1, C its boundary…"

Very interesting discoveries and observations Pi and Anderson.

The Greek word for God is THEO. So saying "I God" in Greek would be saying "I THEO".

Ted’s full name was Theodore John Kaczynski, and he did have a PHD and was a professor. I find these kind of possible cryptic recoveries and cryptic clues fascinating. They also occur in the Zodiac 408. They include MATH I TEACH, TED and a group of words with a nautical theme – WAVE, TIDE, BELL, SHORE. Like I said I find these fascinating, but ultimately it is hard to determine if these are chance formations, just random noise, or likely to have been purposefully done. Doranchak and Glurk have shown me that such finds, while interesting, could well be by chance, as numerous names and words can be found in the same way.

Doug Oswell found most of these 408 cryptic recoveries. He points out that TK’s favorite author was Joseph Conrad, who was a sailor before he became a writer. He also pointed out that the words WAVE, TIDE, BELL, HEAL, EARN (and found by me) SHORE, all feature in a short story by a writer who Conrad admired, a fellow sailor turned writer, Frederick Marryat. The name of the story escapes me now, but all those feature in it, and it deals with hopelessness and the futility of love and life, and Doug thought it would have resonated with TK. TK’s own short story, Ship of Fools, also had a nautical theme.

In what I think is likely a partially correct solution to the 340, the raw Graysmith proposed solution, before he messed it up with forced word solves and anagrams, there are very interesting vertical, backwards and diagonal word finds. They include key Zodiac words found diagonally like LIST and BOMBS, backwards like GAME and SLASH, and interesting words found vertically, many dealing with forms of restraint, such as BARS, LEASH and TIES.

I used to spend more time on cryptic clues, but along with anagrams, Doranchak and Glurk pretty much convinced me that they occur too often and have too many variations to be considered as solid evidence. So, with rare exceptions, I only count any cryptic recoveries, clues or code finds as potentially valid if they occur in normal left to right read, no anagrams, correct spelling.(Which the ten based Caesar shift code finds and alias creations do. More on them soon).

But to me the most impressive one, the one I think is least likely to just be by chance, id the presence of a name in the 340.

In the 340 cipher, as it was printed in newspapers, the letters to form ‘THEODOR J KACZYNSKI" appear in a somewhat systematic and logical way. Given all the letters in the 340, I am sure you can get hundreds of names. What I note here is the following – IF, and I acknowledge it is a big "IF", Zodiac wanted to hide his real name in the cipher, there is an inherent logic in putting his first name in the first line (or two), his middle name or initial on the middle line, and his last name at the end, at the bottom on the last line or last two lines.

Allowing for backwards letters and filled in "O" ‘s to still stand for the letter, you can get "THEODOR" on the first line; (the middle initial J in the middle of the middle line), KAZINSKI on the last line and allowing for one backwards "K" to stand for a "K", you can get "KAC ZYN SKI" on the last two lines, in a 18 letter section. The name KAC-ZYN-SKI has three syllables of three letters each.

Ted loved to see his words in the paper. Just think, if he was Z, with the FBI, police and the public struggling to figure out the identity of the Zodiac and break the 340 code, he could sit back and laugh and see his first and last name in the code, in the newspapers.

What are the odds that in an 18 character section at the end of the code, all 9 letters of the Kaczynski name would appear by chance?

I’m playing around with this idea a little. I wrote a little program that does an exhaustive search for words that can be formed in this way from the cipher: start anywhere, read symbols liberally as letters in any direction. Allow words to pass through boundaries to the other side. I found 275 four letter words this way. They are:

alit arty
bail bait bali biko biro bite bloc blog blot blow boat body bohr boll bolt bomb bond bone bono bony boob book boom boon boor boot bops bosh both bout boyd boys bozo bred bret burl burt byte
cite city clot coat cock coin colt comb cook cool coon coop coot cope cots cowl crib
deny diaz dick dido diet dill dion dock doll dolt done door dopy dork doth duct
emit epic etta
fobs foci fogy folk fond font food fool foot fora fork fort fowl frog
gila gilt glib glop goat good goof gook goon goop goth goya
herb herd hobo hobs hone hood hoof hook hoot host
idol igor into ipod item
jobs jodi john
kilo kilt kith kook
laos loaf loci lock loco loft logo loki look loon loop loot lori lott lout lynx
mend mitt molt moog moor moot mort mott
nerd nook
obit oboe odom odor onto oort opts orcs orly otto ovid ovum
peon perm pert pict pill pipe pips pith pitt pity plop plot ploy pock pogo poky polk poll polo pool poop poor pork port posh post posy pots prod prof
(no q words)
raid rate rend reno rico riot roil rood roof rook room root rote rout
shoo shot slot sobs soft soho soto spit stop
taft tail taro tart tate tear teat tend term them then tick tidy tilt time tint tips tiro tito toby todd tofu togo toil told toll tomb toni took tool toot tors tort tory tost toto tour tout toys trio trod trot troy type typo tzar
(no u words)
void voip vote
whoa whys wood woof wool
(no x words)
yips yogi yoko yolk
zoom zoos

Just scanning some words that look "interesting" (if you can call it that), might be "body", "bomb", "boom", "burl", "burt", "hood", "john", "otto", "prof", "reno", "shot", "stop", "tick", "todd", "tomb", "wood".

Here’s where the first couple hide.

The same procedure produces 86 5-letter words:

artie atoll
batik bigot bioko biped blocs blown boned boner booby boons booth booty boozy botox brook burly
cipro cited clout clown colby colic color coots
digit
epcot
folio forty
godot goofs
hobos honed hooky
idiot igloo
kyoto
loons loony lotto
motor motto
niobe
odder optic orate orbit other ovoid
phone phony pilot piped piper podia polio pricy pyotr
remit rhone roofs rotor
scoot scrod scrub shoal shook snoot spite stock synod
taboo tarot timed timer tipsy tithe tonto trait trend troop trout tumor typed
zombi

Are any of these interesting? Hard to say. Certainly there are a lot of words here that we could possibly combine into something "Zodiac relevant" if we squinted hard enough.

But I think there’s an alternate way to look at the result specifically for "prof john tedk phd"… next post.

Thanks for chiming in guys and really cool experiment anderson110; I would be interested to see how many "coherent" phrases can be created by stringing some of these words together.

I continued digging possibilities using this "frame" and further refined the notion of a TK signature…

Which generates the following sentences:

Of course, the interesting parts are that:

– Richard TK is the name of the father.
– Pipe bombs were a popular device for him.
– Doug Volkoff is a name of significance to him…

At this point, I find it hard to believe that all this is occurring by pure chance. But hey, stranger things…

_pi

You should test your idea by taking a few other POIs about which there is as much info, and seeing if you find relevant strings at the same rate.