Posted on 04/12/2011 1:02:11 AM PDT by Islander7
It may not be code at all, but simply short hand.
Just like BRB,ROFL,etc.
A high-school teacher and his wife broke the Zodiac code with 20 hours of effort.
The lines in parentheses on p1 with similar numerals are nearly identical except for a few characters.
I’ve cracked it!! Let’s see now...
B-E-S-U-R-E-T-O-D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E
Son of a....
They were on the way to my flat, when their electric speedboat shorted out. Working alone, all I was able to decipher was "Nxrdxxn Bmbsitexxx NxZI Spxies"
Nancy Drew was not at home when I called. Frank Merriweather is away at Yale. I am a plucky young chap, though, and I do so want that "Codes and Ciphers" Merit Badge, so I'll soldier on alone.
If you perchance run into Frank and Joe out on the lake, ask them to check in after they get that darned speedboat fixed. Our country's security is at stake.
Thinking inside the box:
“They have tried just about all of the standard routes of cryptanalysis that the top experts use, he said, so the FBI didn’t bother asking for help from the government’s chief code-breaking agency, the National Security Agency, and its high-powered computers in the Maryland suburbs just outside the capital.”
Let’s see: We can’t figure it out, we tried all the standard methods without success so we’re going to ignore the NSA - the premiere, best funded spy agency on the planet. Makes sense to me.
For my part, it’d be easier from the start with a transcription of the letters and numbers to typeface so one could more easily look for patterns eg. is that an “r” an “n” ... ? If in doubt you can refer to the original but a text version would be useful ... ;-)
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