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I came to believe Harden and his wife never broke the 408 characters code, it was a nice try nonetheless, but wasn't the true message of what these 3 ciphers held. The first thing that came to my mind was the fact the zodiac used "+" sign as "and" it couldn't stand for "e" in the code as the Hardens suggested. I do believe, however, that the triangle is "i" as they suggested.

About the 340 cipher - the same applies about the plus symbol. There is no doubt to me that he put that symbol in the ending of his code to mean "end" as in termination of the communication, he just played along the fact he was already suspected to be dyslectic and rolled with it. Just as he did when he rolled with the Hardens' mistake of depicting him as some sort of a satanist who was "collecting slaves for his afterlife" when he himself referred to his murders in later letters. IMHO he wasn't even a person with a belief in God (not that it means anything, I for the record am VERY secular) so he hadn't have regrets about his actions (perhaps untill the christmass 1969 letter he sent Melvin Belli, when he was having a second thought about his pointless/unreasonable/unneeded murders, before switching his mind again and retrurning to his bloodthirsty nature once more in April 20th of 1970). I think that in cases where he wrote "++" in the 340 cipher he meant "and end... **whatever follows**". What do you say/think about my theory?

Israelite Wolfman wrote:I came to believe Harden and his wife never broke the 408 characters code, it was a nice try nonetheless, but wasn't the true message of what these 3 ciphers held. The first thing that came to my mind was the fact the zodiac used "+" sign as "and" it couldn't stand for "e" in the code as the Hardens suggested. I do believe, however, that the triangle is "i" as they suggested.

I am befuddled by this. Using the Harden's key, the 408 decodes to a completely readable message. It's easy to verify by hand. As well, there are at least 4 computerized solvers that can solve the 408, and they ALL reach the same solution as the Hardens.

No other alternate verifiable solution has ever been presented by anyone. Are you saying that the "I LIKE KILLING..." message just came out of thin air, and there is some other "true" solution that has not yet been found?

IMO, that is beyond ridiculous.

-glurk

glurk wrote:I am befuddled by this. Using the Harden's key, the 408 decodes to a completely readable message. It's easy to verify by hand. As well, there are at least 4 computerized solvers that can solve the 408, and they ALL reach the same solution as the Hardens.
No other alternate verifiable solution has ever been presented by anyone. Are you saying that the "I LIKE KILLING..." message just came out of thin air, and there is some other "true" solution that has not yet been found?
IMO, that is beyond ridiculous.

Another way to view it is: The substitution key only has 54 unique symbols in it. Each symbol was assigned to a letter of the alphabet. So, only 54 "steps" were needed to produce a completely readable message. The message is 390 letters long (408 minus the last 18). That means a HUGE piece of information (the readable message of length 390) was revealed with only 54 assignments. 390 divided by 54 is about 7.2. If you think of the 54 assignments as putting information into the decoding, then you got 7.2 times as much information OUT of the decoding. So it's very unlikely that so much detail could come from such a small number of steps.

Also, the gold standard test for me is: Can equally plausible solutions be produced using the same method? The method in this case is simple homophonic substitution. No other plausible substitution key has been found for the 408 so we take the Hardens' key to be correct. Technically, it *is* possible that an equally plausible solution exists for the 408 that is not the Hardens' key. But I think the mathematics behind the cipher make this possibility vanishingly small. So much so that it's practically non-existent.