Edgar Allan Poe On October 22nd 1969, Dr. D.C.B Marsh in alliance with investigators and the San Francisco Examiner, attempted to refocus the Zodiac Killer's attention toward creating a second major cryptogram and "reveal his name in the cipher to established cryptogram experts". Marsh would continue to press the killer throughout the article, stating "I invite Zodiac to send to The American Cryptogram Association a cipher code - however complicated - which will truly and honestly include his name". However, in order to crack any cipher the killer may send, it would have been wise to place certain triggers within the article to guide the Zodiac Killer into choosing a particular cryptographic technique. This may have been the purpose of dropping the name Edgar Allan Poe into the San Francisco Examiner article, thereby influencing the killer to choose a cryptographic technique highlighted by Poe in one of his essays. If the Zodiac Killer then responds with a second cipher, your first port of call would obviously be Edgar Allan Poe.
Although Dave Oranchak doesn't believe the Zodiac Killer used the scytale method of encryption in the recently decoded 340 cipher, this decryption tool does actually decode the message in the 340 cipher. If the Zodiac Killer responded to the prompt by Dr. Marsh and read Edgar Allan Poe's essay A Few Words on Secret Writing, he would have noticed that the first topic of discussion was the scytale cipher, which involves disguising a message by separation, avoiding the common left-to-right method of decryption. This is what the Zodiac Killer used in his 340 cipher. In further reading of A Few Words on Secret Writing, it became apparent that other encryption methods were discussed in addition to the scytale method, with the possibility existing that the Zodiac Killer may have adopted one of these techniques for his following 13-Symbol cipher on April 20th 1970. The most notable encryption methods discussed included separating the alphabet A to M, and N to Z, into two equal parts of 13 letters. This involved placing the alphabet into the following configuration.
Here is an excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe's A Few Words on Secret Writing: and, so placed, a might stand for n and n for a, o for b and b for o, &c. &c. This, again, having an air of regularity which might be fathomed, the key alphabet might be constructed absolutely at random. The next line was: Thus A might stand for P.
Although Dave Oranchak doesn't believe the Zodiac Killer used the scytale method of encryption in the recently decoded 340 cipher, this decryption tool does actually decode the message in the 340 cipher. If the Zodiac Killer responded to the prompt by Dr. Marsh and read Edgar Allan Poe's essay A Few Words on Secret Writing, he would have noticed that the first topic of discussion was the scytale cipher, which involves disguising a message by separation, avoiding the common left-to-right method of decryption. This is what the Zodiac Killer used in his 340 cipher. In further reading of A Few Words on Secret Writing, it became apparent that other encryption methods were discussed in addition to the scytale method, with the possibility existing that the Zodiac Killer may have adopted one of these techniques for his following 13-Symbol cipher on April 20th 1970. The most notable encryption methods discussed included separating the alphabet A to M, and N to Z, into two equal parts of 13 letters. This involved placing the alphabet into the following configuration.
Here is an excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe's A Few Words on Secret Writing: and, so placed, a might stand for n and n for a, o for b and b for o, &c. &c. This, again, having an air of regularity which might be fathomed, the key alphabet might be constructed absolutely at random. The next line was: Thus A might stand for P.
I took this sequence of text and applied it to my reasoning. The examples given by Edgar Allan Poe, indicate that A might stand for N, or N might stand for A (the letter above or below in the configuration). And A might stand for P. If the Zodiac Killer followed this text, then the first ciphertext character A in his design would be either the plaintext letter N or P. His second ciphertext character E would be the plaintext letter R. Placing N before R doesn't work, so I placed the letter P into position instead, so P preceded R. I have always stated in previous articles that I believed the ciphertext characters K and M were fixed between the three circled 8's, indicating that they represented themselves as the initial clue (shown in blue), and the three 8's represented the beginning of each element in the phrase. The diagram below, following the simple instructions of Edgar Allan Poe (even removing the K and M), tallies with the solution of Fk, I'm crackproof suggested in many previous articles, such as The Answer to the 13-Symbol Code. This new finding appears to suggest I may be on the right track.
If we then represent the second ciphertext character N (11th position} with the plaintext character A shown in Poe's writing, we get the diagram shown below, with the circular Fk, I'm crackproof starting to emerge.
If we look at the three eights on the 13-Symbol cipher and literally take them as a beginning, then we would have three parts to our solution, comprising of 2, 2 and 9 alphabetical characters. The two alphabetical letters of K and M, placed at the center of the 13-Symbol cipher between the number eights, indicates that we must look for two consecutive pieces of Zodiac text, consisting of two letters each, in his subsequent communications (therefore ? K and ? M). If we jump forward to the 13-Hole postcard mailed on October 5th 1970, the Zodiac Killer stated "Fk, I'm crackproof". Why would he pull this statement out of the hat, accompanied by two letters that failed to spell a word, unless it had some relevance to an unbreakable cipher or code? I noticed that when this phrase was inserted around the K and M on the 13-Symbol cipher, the number 8 on each occasion started each section of the phrase (shown by the green rectangles below).
The relationship between the remaining ciphertext characters of N, A and M, to the plaintext characters in the solution of O, C and K respectively, can be seen in the diagram below. These are never more than two apart in the alphabet. This is a work in progress.
"This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is Fk, I'm crackproof".
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