Homophone sequences

These are the assignments of symbols to plaintext letters in the 408-character cipher:


 * W [A] L [B#%] N [DO(^] E [ENWZ6p+] S [FK7@] A [GS8l] T [HIL5] F [JQ] H [M)</tt>] I [PU9k</tt>] G [R</tt>] O [TXd!</tt>] B [V</tt>] U [Y</tt>] V [c</tt>] C [e</tt>] D [fz</tt>] X [j</tt>] M [q</tt>] R [rt\</tt>] P [=</tt>] K [/</tt>] Y [_</tt>]

The following is a table showing plaintext letters that have more than one cipher symbol assignment. A set of multiple symbol assignments for a plaintext letter is referred to here as a set of homophones. Column descriptions:


 * Letter: The plaintext letter mapped to the symbols
 * Symbols: The set of cipher letters known to be mapped to the plaintext letter.
 * Length: The number of items in the set of homophones.
 * Sequence: What the cipher text looks like if you remove all symbols that are not in the set of homophones.
 * Length (%): The length of the sequence, and the percentage of the entire cipher text covered by the sequence.

Of interest to us here is the fact that the homophone sequences contain orderly repetitions of symbol assignments. For example, when the killer assigned symbols to the plain text letter "I", he selected cipher symbols in order from the homophone set PU9k</tt>. The symbols appear in the cipher text in this order: <tt>9PUk 9PUk 9PUk 9PUk 9PUk 9PUk 9PUk 9PUk 9P99U99PP9Uk</tt>. Here is the original cipher text with homophone set <tt>PU9k</tt> highlighted, which makes the repeated sequence easy to see:

9 % P /Z/ U B% k OR=pX=B WV+eGYF6 9 H P @K!qYe MJY^ U I k 7qTtNQYD5) S(/ 9 #B P ORA U %fRlqE k ^LMZJdr\pFHVWe8Y @+qGD 9 KI)6qX85zS( RNtIYElO8qGBTQS#B Ld/ P #B@XqEHM U ^RR k cZKqpI)Wq!85LMr 9 # B P DR+j=6\N(eE U H k F  ZcpOVWI5+tL)l^R6H  I 9 DR_TYr\de/@XJQA   P 5M8R U t%L)NVEKH=G rI!J k 5 9 8LMlNA)Z( P z U p k A 9 #BVW\+VTtO P ^=Srlf U e67DzG%%IM N k )ScE/ 9 %%ZfA P #BV peXqWq_F#8c+@ 9 A 9 B  %OT5R U c+_dYq_^SqW  VZeGYKE_TYA 9 %#Lt_  H!FBX 9 zXADd\7L!=q  _ed##6e5 P ORXQF%Gc  Z@JTtq_8JI+rB P QW6  VEXr 9 WI6qEHM)=UIk

Let's find all such repeated sequences by inspecting every combination of symbols within each homophone set. The following table shows all such repeated sequences. Column descriptions:


 * Combination: A combination of symbols from a set of homophones.
 * Sequence: What the cipher text looks like if you remove all symbols that are not in the set of homophones. Repeated combinations are shown in boldface.
 * Repeated symbols: Symbols that are repeated in the sequence.
 * Number: The number of repetitions
 * Percentage: The amount of the sequence that is "covered" by the repetitions.