The 340 Project

[sinceurup]

The 340 Project

What is it? I'm calling on the Riddles community to band together to solve the unsolvable! I believe that you/we have the knowledge and know how to finally crack this thing. With the different types of thinkers in here and the creativity you all have, I am confident this thing will be solved.

It is a Cipher created by the infamous Zodiac killer. On the website, I have compiled a few tools (will update as more become available), and resources. Hopefully with some brainstorming as well as a community outreach this thing will get cracked.

This project is highly evolving, and as more information or ideas are presented I will update. Be patient as it is in the beginning stages of development. Your feedback/discussion here is how this thing will take flight.

It has been said that the solved Zodiac 408 cipher was a homophonic substitution cipher, so if this is your forte perhaps you will be able to uncover what has plagued experts for over 40 years.

"..it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve" - Edger Allen Poe

http://www.sinceurup.com/the340

Moderation Note:

This is not a riddle game, but a real riddle connected to ciphered messages written by a serial killer back in the 60s to the police and newspapers. This ciphered message has not been deciphered yet, although different possible solutions have been presented by different people, none of them is widely accepted.

This thread has been approved by moderation on an exceptional basis.
Since the target audience who might be interested in trying to solve this ciphered message, are most probably those who like to solve riddle games as well, moderation has finally decided to approve this topic here in the Riddles subforum.

In this thread, you don't need to use spoiler tags, but all other forum rules apply of course.

Good luck!

[Adventure]

It's interesting, yet it seems like an immensely task. I have been doing some reading about Zodiac killer and his ciphers, and it appears he also uses different languages and made what it appeared typos. That all will make it only more complex.

Please correct me if I wrong about those findings, or this is not fully determined yet. I of course heard about the Zodiac Killer, but I don't know anything about the decipher techniques he used and what is typical for him. Before I even try to work on that note, it appears I first have a lot of reading to do to know what is known and still unclear.

I don't think that high from myself I can contribute, but I am surely interested in this project. I hope I am not the only one.

[Mistery]

Indeed a very fascinating topic. I read about the Zodiac killer, and was following some discussions on a cryptography forums some years ago.

Yes, indeed he misspelled some words. If you check out sinceurup's links, check out the Tools section, which also contains a link to a detailed description/breakdown of his previous ciphers, which have been broken. Also there are some links to tools that might be helpful

Also sinceurup refers on the main page to 2 suggestions that have been made for this cipher.

I might play around with it when I have time, but unfortunately I can't devote myself deeply to this ciphered message due to lack of time.

[sinceurup]

It's interesting, yet it seems like an immensely task. I have been doing some reading about Zodiac killer and his ciphers, and it appears he also uses different languages and made what it appeared typos. That all will make it only more complex.

Please correct me if I wrong about those findings, or this is not fully determined yet. I of course heard about the Zodiac Killer, but I don't know anything about the decipher techniques he used and what is typical for him. Before I even try to work on that note, it appears I first have a lot of reading to do to know what is known and still unclear.

I don't think that high from myself I can contribute, but I am surely interested in this project. I hope I am not the only one.

Unfortunately there is no definitive answer that I can present to you. Through my research, I have found various theories in regards to your subject. Some claim he made typos to throw off people trying to decrypt it. Others say it was by accident and that the typos actually weren't typos but merely him being unable to read his own handwriting when he went back to make the cipher harder stating that some of his symbols could be confused if the ink blotch was too heavy. Lastly, I found another site that theorizes that he used ancient European languages in a game. Combining different languages into something called a morpheme or a portmanteaus.

I think the closest method of deciphering this is to do what a blogger I found did. Convert all of his random symbols into a number. Work with the numbers, look for repeating occurrences. Decide which numbers or number combinations have the highest frequency and try to decipher it that way.

On the main page I have a link to that guy's "decryption". Which still doesn't make complete sense. However it is close to the previous deciphered code by the Zodiac killer.


Some also think the name of the killer or key to this cipher lies in the remaining text at the bottom of the 408 cipher "ebeorietemethhpiti".

[Mistery]

Even if I don't have time to really devote myself to this, it's still very interesting to play around with the "Zodiac webtoy" you linked to under the tools

I hope that some members get also interested and try to contribute in some way

EDIT
By the way, some people think that the cross in almost the middle marks indeed the center, and the last line is more of a signature (in that case the cross would be in the middle indeed).

The Zodiac killer himself gave the clue I think that the solution had to do with radians.

So could it be that the text has to be divided into several parts? E.g. 4 quadrants?

[sinceurup]

The blogger that deciphered it a little said he did it by breaking into 4 equal quadrants taking the cross as the divider.. So perhaps.

[Secret]

Just read this interesting thread and have also heard about the "quadrant" theory. Alot of reading I think on my part to be done as I've never really "studied" the Zodiac Killer in any great depth.
But I'll be sure to post what I have, find, think here when i do