Analysis of AK Wilks' Caesar shift method

[doranchak Profile Website]

Incidentally, the DICK GAIKOWSKI match found in EBEORIETEMETHHPITI has this as one of the possible shifts:

Code: Select all

 v [s] v  f  i  z  v  k  v [d] v [k] y  y [g] z  k  z  (Shift: -9)
 y  v  y [i] l  c  y  n  y  g  y  n  b  b  j  c  n  c  (Shift: -6)
 b  y  b  l  o  f  b  q  b  j  b  q  e  e  m  f  q  f  (Shift: -3)
 e  b  e  o  r [i] e  t  e  m  e  t  h  h  p [i] t  i  (Shift: 0)
 h  e  h  r  u  l  h  w  h  p  h  w  k  k  s  l [w] l  (Shift: 3)
[k] h  k  u  x  o [k] z  k  s  k  z  n  n  v  o  z [o] (Shift: 6)
 n  k  n  x [a] r  n [c] n  v  n  c  q  q  y  r  c  r  (Shift: 9)
Shifts: 6 -9 -6 9 0 6 9 -9 -9 -9 0 3 6


69 69 06 9999 036

That's quite a pattern! And the 408 was mailed to the newspapers in 1969!!!

</sarcasm>

[glurk Profile Website]

doranchak-

He was also born in '36.

That is an amazing thing which is beyond any possible odds!!!!!

-glurk

[Zsearcher Profile]

Wilks says ours don't count because they involve "extreme" anagramming, I guess as opposed to his "mild" anagramming.

Since when is anagramming mild to extreme.

Does someone have a mildness scale for anagramming I can see?

This is a case of, he who writes the rules makes up the terminology as he goes.

[doranchak Profile Website]

Well, you could quantify it with "edit distances."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_distance

But AK's focus on the selections with small edit distances is pointless, because there are numerous other selections that also have small (or smaller) edit distances.

[Zsearcher Profile]

Thanks.

So a good edit distance can just as easily be by chance as by intentional placement.

[Wrench Profile]

To be fair, finding names with less than 18 characters gets easier with the more available spares you have to work with. I remember trying Arthur Leigh Allen, Richard Gaikowski and a couple others and coming up one char short from working (this was a long time ago, and with pencil and paper, could be wrong).

That said, imho the last 18 is merely filler used to make the last third equal in length to the other two and avoid giving it away as being the last part of the cipher.

[Jem Profile]

Glurk wrote:

So, if you look at that link doranchak posted, a rather long list of 3,888 matches, the ones that are followed by:

theodorejkaczynski Counts: 0,0

Are the 216 perfectly bunched instances.
---------------------------------------

Thank you, Glurk!

Zsearcher - No, I'm not AK.

Wrench, according to Mike Kelleher and David Van Nuys, Zodiac put a different number of stamps on each of the three 408 letters, to show the order in which the parts should go. But no one noticed this at the time. IF this is true, then Z wasn't using filler for the purpose of confusing the order. Wish I knew whether or not that's true about the different number of stamps.

~ Jem

[Michael Butterfield Profile]

Jem, you can view the three envelopes in question at the Document Gallery:

http://www.zodiackillerfacts.com/galler ... .php?cat=2

[Zsearcher Profile]

To be fair, finding names with less than 18 characters gets easier with the more available spares you have to work with. I remember trying Arthur Leigh Allen, Richard Gaikowski and a couple others and coming up one char short from working (this was a long time ago, and with pencil and paper, could be wrong).

That said, imho the last 18 is merely filler used to make the last third equal in length to the other two and avoid giving it away as being the last part of the cipher.

Any name with two As will not work in the 18 Wrench. Only one A is possible.

I'd like to try to find Penn in all the cipher snippets AK finds Ted in. That would really blow his mind. No it won't but it will be another negating factor.

[MrBungle Profile]

That said, imho the last 18 is merely filler used to make the last third equal in length to the other two and avoid giving it away as being the last part of the cipher.

Hey Wrench! Long time no see!

I'm fairly awful with this codebreaking stuff (hence why I rarely comment), but I have a question...do you think there's a chance that not all of the 18 are filler? Maybe the message goes for, say, the first 5 characters and the final 13 are nulls (or something like that).