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Welcome to the Zodiac Ciphers wiki

This wiki is an attempt to gather all useful factual and verifiable information pertaining to the ciphers associated with the "Zodiac Killer". It is also a place to post results of experimental analysis of the ciphers.

There is so much information on these ciphers, but it is very hard to find in one place. This wiki tries to correct this problem by curating factual tidbits, experimental results, and analysis in a single location.

The ciphers:

• Solved 408-character cipher
• Solved 340-character cipher
• Unsolved 13-character "My name is" cipher
• Unsolved 32-character "map code" cipher
• Zodiac symbol from Halloween card

Other articles and information:

• Unique symbols from all four cipher alphabets
• Webtoy's transcription scheme - ASCII representations of the ciphertext on this wiki use the Webtoy's ASCII transcriptions of the cipher.
• Software Tools
• Word counts from the Zodiac Killer's correspondences
• Research papers - Academic papers related to Zodiac ciphers in particular, and cryptography in general
• Cipher comparisons - Tabulation of measurements performed on an assortment of ciphers. Includes various test ciphers, and famous unsolved ciphers.
• Timeline - A collection of events associated with the crimes of the Zodiac killer
• Collection of test ciphers - A collection of ciphers, many with known solutions, organized by how much they resemble the unsolved 340-character cipher.
• Catalog of decipherment ideas
• Catalog of sources for Zodiac's cipher symbols
• Miscellaneous case updates and details

Discredited or inconclusive solution attempts

• Daryll Lathers' 340 solution: Overuse of anagrams, and polyalphabetic assignments of plaintext letters to cipher symbols:
  • Article
• Traveller1st's partial 340 solution: A demonstration of how partial solutions can be created which contain Zodiac-related words and phrases:
  • Post
• Özcan Türkmen's solution: Overuse of anagrams, and many other subjective interpretations of plaintext fragments:
  • Article
• Partial solution by Jonas: A solution that contains a name and a few legible words, but much gibberish.
  • Article
• Thomas Dougherty's code theory: A production of plaintext letters arbitrarily expanded into full words.
  • Analysis
• Lyndon Lafferty (13 cipher): A combination of approaches that produces ambiguous solutions.
  • Analysis
• Corey Starliper (340 cipher): An arbitrary decryption system that permits the insertion of a predetermined message.
  • Original news article
  • Analysis showing that Corey's solution is invalid
• AK Wilks / Zander Kite (32, 408, and 340 ciphers): These decryption systems permit many arbitrary solutions due to vast spaces of possible selections.
  • Original article
  • Above link is dead so here's the Wayback Machine copy
  • Analysis and discussion
• Robert Graysmith (340 cipher): Selective use of anagramming and other techniques, resulting in an incoherent message typical of anagram-based solutions.
  • Analysis and discussion
• John Cecil: Relaxes the "one plaintext letter per symbol" constraint, resulting in easily fitting a pre-conceived plaintext.
  • Post
• Hal Kravcik
  • Most recent solution
  • Discussion / analysis
• Chris Farmer / OPORD
  • Post
  • The above link is dead. There is a partial snapshot here but the images were not preserved: https://web.archive.org/web/20120830044446/http://www.opordanalytical.com:80/articles1/zodiac-340.htm
• rand
  • Post
• Robert P. Ackerman
  • Post
  • Post
• back2good
  • Post
• AuthUser
  • Post
• Pax
  • Post
  • Post
  • Post
• dronjom
  • Post
• Rembrandt
  • Post
• Hal 9000
  • Post
• hermeswest
  • Post
• Miscellaneous
  • Post

Discussions regarding these and other solution attempts

See Also

• The Zodiac Ciphers blog - A place for announcements and news related to the Zodiac ciphers.
• CryptoScope - The newest section of the "zodiac webtoy". Analyze statistical features and patterns in the Zodiac ciphers and more.
• Zodiac Cipher Webtoy - Plug in your own decryption attempts with this online tool.
• Transcriptions of letters associated with the Zodiac killer: From WikiSource | Transcriptions used for my experiments
• "Crypto 101" by glurk - An introduction to simple cryptography concepts.
• Top 10 uncracked codes (Curiously, the Zodiac codes are missing)
• Cipher Mysteries - Nick Pelling's fascinating site, filled with articles about mysterious unsolved historical and contemporary ciphers, including the Zodiac ciphers.

You can contact me here: Email me if you want an account here. Account creation is currently disabled due to abuse by spammers.