In the wake of Dave Oranchak’s epic crack of the Zodiac Killer’s Z340 cipher, which other unsolved ciphers might get cracked in 2021?
For me, the way the Z340 was solved highlighted a number of issues:
- It seems very likely to me that other long-standing cipher mysteries will also require collaboration between entirely different kinds of researcher
- Hence I suspect that many are beyond the FBI’s in-house capabilities, and it will need to find a new way to approach these if it wants them cracked
- The whole Big Data thing is starting to open some long-closed doors
With these in mind, here’s my list of what might get cracked next:
Scorpion Ciphers
The Scorpion ciphers were sent to America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh from 1991 onwards: we have copies of S1 and S5, but the rest are in the hands of the FBI. As you’d expect, I’ve blogged about these many times, e.g. here, here, here, and here. I also created a related set of seven cipher challenges, of which only one has been solved (by Louie Helm) so far.
To be honest, I fail to understand why the FBI hasn’t yet released the other Scorpion Ciphers. These are the grist the Oranchak code-cracking mill is looking for: homophonic ciphers, underlying patterns, Big Data, etc.
Nick’s rating for a 2021 crack: 8/10 if the FBI releases the rest, else 2/10
Beale Ciphers
Even if I don’t happen to believe a measly word of the Beale Papers, I still think that the Beale Ciphers themselves are probably genuine. These use homophonic ciphers (albeit where the unbroken B1 and B3 ciphers use a system that is slightly different from the one used in the broken B2 cipher).
Because we already have the hugely improbable Gillogly / Hammer strings to work with (which would seem to be the ‘tell’ analogous to the Z340’s 19-repeat behaviour), we almost certainly don’t need to find a different book
Given that Virginia is Dave Oranchak’s stamping ground, I wouldn’t be surprised if the redoubtable Mr O has already had a long, hard look at the Beale Ciphers. So… we’ll see what 2021 has to bring.
Nick’s rating for a 2021 crack: 2/10
Paul Rubin’s Cryptograms
A curious cryptogram was found taped to the chest of Paul Emanuel Rubin, an 18-year-old chemistry student found dead from cyanide poisoning near Philadelphia Airport in January 1953. As usual, I’ve blogged about this a fair few times, e.g. here, here, here and here.
There’s a good scan of the cryptogram on my Cipher Foundation page here; there’s a very detailed account in Craig Bauer’s “Unsolved!”; and the 142-page FBI file on Paul Rubin is here.
The ‘trick’ behind the cryptogram appears to be to use a different cipher key for each line. Specifically, the first few lines appear to be a kind of “Trithemian Typewriter” cipher, where every other letter (or some such pattern) is enciphered using a substitution cipher, and where the letters inbetween are filled in to make these look like words. This is, I believe, the reason we can see words like “Dulles” and “Conant” peeking through the mess of “astereantol” and “magleagna” gibberish.
Right now, I’m wondering whether we might be able to iterate through thousands of possible Trithemian schemes to crack each individual line (e.g. lines 4 and 5 appear to share the same cipher key number).
The cipher keys appear to use security by obscurity (& terseness), so I suspect that these may well be defeatable. Definitely one to consider.
Nick’s rating for a 2021 crack: 4/10
Who was The Zodiac Killer?
Even if the Z340 plaintext failed to cast any light on his identity (as I certainly expected), surely a DNA attack must now be on the cards?
I’d have thought that the relatively recent (2018) success in identifying Joseph James De Angelo as the Golden State Killer must surely mean that the Zodiac Killer’s DNA is next in line in the forensic queue.
To my eyes, the murder of Paul Stine seems to me to have been the least premeditated of all the Zodiac Killer’s attacks, so I would have expected the crime-scene artifacts to have been a treasure trove of DNA evidence. But there are plenty of other claims for Zodiac DNA, so what do I know?
Anyway, I have no real doubt that there are 5 or 6 documentaries currently in production for 2021 release that are all racing to use DNA to GEDmatch the bejasus out of the Zodiac Killer. I guess we shall see what they find…
Nick’s rating for a 2021 breakthrough: 7/10 with DNA, else 0/10
Who Was The Somerton Man?
2021 may finally see the exhumation Derek Abbott has been pushing for for so long; plus the start of a worldwide DNA scavenger hunt to identify the unidentified corpse found on Somerton Beach on 1st December 1948.
But after all that, will the mysterious man turn out to be Robin McMahon Thomson’s missing father; or a shape-shifting Russian spy; or a Melbourne crim whom everybody suddenly wanted to forget they ever met?
All the same, even if we do get a name and a DOB etc, will that be enough to end all the shoddy melodrama around the case? Errrm… probably not. 🙁
For what it’s worth, I would have thought that Robin’s father’s surname was almost certainly (Nick shudders at the obviousness) McMahon. I also wouldn’t like to bet against a Dr McMahon in Sydney (e.g. the surgeon Edward Gerard McMahon, though I expect there are others), but feel free to enlighten me why you think McMahon was actually a family name etc etc.
Nick’s rating for a 2021 breakthrough: 8/10 with an exhumation, else 1/10
I couldn’t find the explanation of the Z340 decryption in text form, yet the English videos are still locked for me. Do you have a link to a detailed text, Nick?
Yes, I am inclined to agree with you that there seems, still, a lot of potential for the use of DNA to identify killers and the like. DNA techniques continue to improve and so the ability to work with very small samples of degraded DNA and larger DNA databases and the lower cost of DNA sequencing amongst other advances all spell the possibility of cracking problems as yet uncracked.
My probability the Voynich will get deciphered this year less than 1/10 A stoke of very good luck could lead to a decipherment. However I think the kind of luck needed would be something like:
1) Discovery of an unknown document describing the cipher, probably produced by the author.
2) A block-paradigm document
3) A chance and unexpected pattern discovered within the manuscript.
4) An unknown or silent researcher who has very diligently devised a method to crack the manuscript.
You can never tell what might emerge from the archives, so anything is possible there. However so far nothing close to what would be needed to crack the cipher have been found. When it comes to a decipherment based on what we already know and the known research that has been carried it seems to me that we are very far off.
I would say that the Somerton Man is Robin’s father, that would make a lot of things easier to understand. Then he could also be a spy or a petty criminal or a foreigner or a criminal spy from overseas with a soft spot for ballet (after all, Russians love ballet) and exotic poetry (just a side effect of being a spy and having to use a lot of poem codes).
As for the Voynich, I think that correctly interpreting the pictures could bring a valuable insight about the context of text and so a decisive step toward its deciphering. Currently I think there are many misconceptions about the meaning of those pictures.
As for Big Data, I consider it a fad. It is little more than a marketing term for the great computing capabilities of modern machines. The mathematics, statistics, coding practices behind it do not look groundbreaking to me. The cheap price of RAM and SSD more so.
Keane hunters of buried treasure on the so called SM case with its connected names of Harkness, Thomson, and McMahon have been dealt a blow by the once generally reliable genealogical search sites My Heritage, Geni and their affiliates. In knowingly encouraging known Cramer cronies and other such reprobates to input conncocted ficticious and unproven detail on their formats, may lead to a decline in pursuance of worthy new leads and initiatives. Thereby ensuring victory to our champions of false witness and defeat for truth, justice and the American way eg., recent elections in a big sick society that still trusts in God to a fault without fear favor (sic)., political bias not withstanding.
In 2021 the Voynich Manuscript will be decoded, no doubt about it !
( At least that is my annual view at the turn of the year ).
bi3mw: maybe, maybe. We can hope! 🙂
bi3mw: My level of optimism that it will be cracked this year has fallen as my ideas as to the number and type of string mapping there may be has changed. If we have a verbose cipher with a very large number of distinct and different string mappings then figuring out what is what could require some hard core AI number crunching. In short, even if we know exactly the nature of the cipher that we are working with, it still could be incredibly difficult to crack.
M R Knowles/Nick Pelling: Cracking VM in ’21 would be great and do so with my sincere best wishes. Maybe, just maybe we should also be mindful of what we hope and wish for. Things are not always as they seem. Indeed, indeed.
Shoddy melodrama? I thought my side was holding up well.
Peteb: Brings to mind Alf Boxall’s “Quite a melodramatic thesis” response to something totally unrelated to anything remotely connected with missing matches, striped shirts or beach bodies perse. Your side is nowhere to be seen but for the fake kiss my arse Ruskie as if you hadn’t noticed.
I set my sights on more lofty goals rather than your lowly goading.
John Sanders: As I said, at the moment I see it as being very unlikely that the Voynich will be deciphered this year. Today I feel that unless we have a real stroke of luck the Voynich is unlikely to be deciphered any time soon. Obviously my opinion my change. It really depends on how far there is to go along the road to decipherment and how far we have come so far. My sense is that there is probably along way to go and that we have not gone very far yet. If we can’t rely on a block-paradigm or large crib then it looks like there would have to be some kind of heavy AI searching algorithm even if we are confident of the general underlying nature of the cipher used. When it comes to getting a better understanding of the specific nature of the cipher used I would hope with luck I find more evidence this year, but I am very much at the mercy of the archives, so I cannot predict what they may have hiding within them and what they do not.
Bonzo has set his sights aloft to go about with his head in the clouds presumably. In that case I’m duty bound to goad him into coming back down to terra firma by whatever means be at hand. Peanuts have been known to work with some lower order simian types.
After much thinking about what could be deciphered in the next 12 months or so, this is my list:
– Somerton Man’s identity 50%
– Voynich 25%
– John Sanders’s convoluted messages 1% (just kidding 🙂
Stefano Guidoni: I suspect every other cipher mystery will be long solved before John Sanders is even partially decrypted. And I believe that’s the way he likes it. 😉
The Beale Ciphers most definitely have been cracked in 2014. I have some time on my hands and have been working with them to finish them out. One-Pot he talks about has 19 silver ores in it. This one was in a place that would have been easy to get to at the time. One other Pot he speaks of would have had funding for the hunt of the rest of the 10 one-ton pots.
One interesting item about Jim Gillogly’s Beale sequence is that in my deciphered text seems to be, go south SSBE ( FDEFGHIIJKL )=( 195 320 37 122 113 6 140 8 120 305 42 ) Just some fun things that I have been working on within my deciphered text.
I would like to say that I believe That Stephen M. Matyas, Jr has a very good scenario for what became of the Beale Treasure of gold. The fact that William C. Beale (Son of William Beale) used the Virginia Gold Rush to simply cash in on the Thomas Beale gold vault in 1832-1838 or so with several mining companies is not something to be overlooked. Mr. Morriss was to open the box in 1832. The chance that Thomas Beale had a plan B with a letter and box with some other family member would be something I can see happening. The fact William is starting his mining companies 2-3 years later after the date of a letter would have been sent out with instructions makes perfect sense.
The only gold in this whole event left is of being the only one to break the Beale Code without being sent the key by mail. I am not a treasure hunter, just the guy who cracked the Beale Ciphers with the key intended to do so.
>which other unsolved ciphers might get cracked in 2021?
Hi, I believe I solved 3rd cipher of Beale Papers. The KEY (reference book) is here
– The St. Louis Directory and Register, Containing the Names, Professions, and Residence of All the Heads of Families and Persons in Business; By John A. Paxton; 1821. The referenced text starts here: St. Louis, Missouri, is a flourishing incorporated post town.
The first letter S of the first word corresponds to code “1” in the encoded text. The first letter M of the second word corresponds to code “2” in the encoded text, and so on.
The beginning of the text is:
TTT
I
Aot Mmis
Jet Haba
…
I have cracked the Ricky McCormick code. I just did it tonight. He names his killer in the cypher and explains the reason he believes he will be murdered. I have not shared this with the FBI yet.
Mia Code: very interesting – may I ask how you went about cracking it?