3 ms·

How were the individual characters encoded?

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• warent 6y ago
  it's explained by the crackers in a YouTube video. It's a pretty basic substitution encoding, except one letter of the alphabet can be encoded by a variety of symbols. It was difficult to solve because the cypher has three different sections, and they're intended to be read diagonally, but each section also has some additional minor ad hoc rules. https://youtu.be/-1oQLPRE21o https://youtu.be/-1oQLPRE21o
  • busyant 6y ago
    It would be interesting to know how they realized there were 3 different sections. In the video, he notes that 2 of the three sections have the same number of lines (10 iirc) and the 3rd section has only 2 lines. I wonder if it was just trial and error that made them realize there were 3 sections or if there were "compositional" differences that made each section stand out from the others.
    • rmac 6y ago
      The code breakers said that discovering Z340 was three sections was "luck" but it's likely they were informed by previous zodiac antics: "On July 31, 1969, Zodiac sent his first cipher: the famous three-part cipher Z408. The Z408 was separated into three different parts..."