I’d be curious to see a full list of dropped and added symbols from the 408 to the 340.

It’s interesting if there are 13 different symbols. I know you said approx. Just thinking of the Z13 and how it came right after "…..have you cracked the last cipher I sent you?".

It’s not far away from that Trav, I’ll have to go back and dig out notes or do a recount ( I used to have it all off by heart one time but it’s been a while since I got involved in the codes).It’s like a dream to me that there was 13 as I was working on something along those lines in the past.
For now, it just strikes me that there must be some specific reason why he did what he did…..either something along the lines as I’ve outlined above OR perhaps he was concentrating on the 340….the increase in symbols come mainly from extra " circle" type symbols…circle,circle with dot,circle shaded to right, left, top, bottom etc and a few variation of existing symbols (perhaps there is a sequence there or some relation in values, that made it easier for him)
What I still find fascinating though is him sitting down and deciding which specific ones to eliminate. It’s very hard to think that it was completely random.

I strongly believe both of these ciphers are connected at a deeper level. In the 408 he does not use a "C", in the 340 he does not use a Q. One letter of the alphabet dropped each time. The last 18 letters of the 408 gibberish (maybe) and he’s doing the same with the last line of the 340.

I’d love to see exactly what was written in the papers at the time…ie how they stated the Hardens solved it. I know the bones of that is well known but I’d bet he took each part of that an altered his mistakes (if they were mistakes )

Just an observation…nothing more. Perhaps the questions are still relevant regardless of what I produce.

Was just thinking about the Ciphers and how, apparently, Z increased the number of symbols in the 340 to make it harder to crack. I forget off hand the exact number…went from 55ish in the 408 to 63 or so in the 340. However there are approximately 13 different symbols in the 340, which means Z dropped/changed a few.
Maybe it isn’t but it just seemed a little strange, when he just needed to add an extra few. I also wondered how/why he dropped/changed the ones he did and if this was a random choice or if there was method to his madness.

Anyway…long story short…as best I can see, he dropped 6 symbols:-

PICNIC TABLE = P
REVERSE E = C
REVERSE R = R
ANCHOR = O ( anchor symbols are used in the 340 but with added "dots" to left and right)
Q = F
Capital I = T

P. CROFT

I´m always on DEEP DEEP water when it comes to codes/ciphers because I don´t know what I’m talking about:)

So…I have no idea wheter this has any relevance at all, but I´ll post it just in case:

The "P. CROFT" made me think of … H. P. Lovecraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft

Quote:

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) — known as H. P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy, poetry and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction.[1]

Lovecraft’s guiding aesthetic and philosophical principle was what he termed "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror", the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally inimical to the interests of humankind. As such, his stories express a profound indifference to human beliefs and affairs. Lovecraft is the originator of the Cthulhu Mythos story cycle and the Necronomicon, a fictional magical textbook of rites and forbidden lore.[2]

You can find quite a lot about ciphehrs connected to the "Necronomicon"

This is one webpage:

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/cienc … con_02.htm

The Cipher Manuscript known as "Necronomicon"

here is one image of from that website:

If you Google : "necronomicon" "hp lovecraft" "cipher" there is a lot to find.

I’d be curious to see a full list of dropped and added symbols from the 408 to the 340.

http://zodiackillerciphers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Comparison_of_cipher_alphabets#Observations

Thanks for posting that Dave….and apologies I had missed the "backslash" symbol, leaving a total of 7 symbols dropped from the 408.( assuming the Capital I’s are different. So he has dropped both symbols for "R" from the 408.

Just thinking out loud and looking at this a little differently….Z has dropped 7 symbols but only 6 values…P,C,R,O,F AND T. . When we look at the alphabet sequence we have …O,P,Q,R,S,T.
Chances are that Q would not be a letter contained in this message,leaving a string of values O,P, R, S and T. I’m thinking of this in terms of the new symbols introduced
( especially the 4 new shaded circle symbols) and just wondering if they too might have been used in sequence to represent these values.
Notwithstanding the fact that there are numerious ways Z may have went about this, I just wonder if he jumbled up the symbols and values he kept onto and brought in these new symbols to cover the values dropped.

I’d be curious to see a full list of dropped and added symbols from the 408 to the 340.

http://zodiackillerciphers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Comparison_of_cipher_alphabets#Observations

Thanks, D. I figured that curiosity was already satisfied somewhere. I find it really interesting that all of the "dropped symbols" from the 408 are reincarnated in either reversed or rotated versions in the 340 (the "picnic table" becomes a K rotated a quarter turn counter clockwise). It makes me wonder whether they were not actually dropped but rather altered via some systematic rotation of symbols from the 408 to the 340. My intuition keeps bringing me back to the idea of Z expanding his available symbols by creating a catalogue of each symbol in four different stages of rotation. Symmetric symbols like the + sign could be sadistically used to represent multiple letters (could this be why there are three times as many + symbols in a shorter cipher?). Z could then pick and choose symbols to create seemingly meaningful patterns or word fragments (HER, GOD, ZODAIK) while ignoring symbols that looked too awkward.

I know that idea sucks because it would make the cipher virtually unsolvable but I think it’s worthwhile to consider possible ways in which Z could have upped the level of complexity in the 340 in a way that the ZKDekrypto or any other brute force method couldn’t unravel.