Comments on: Amateur Cryptographers: Help Break the Da Vinci Code Decision Code [UPDATED]

By: Gaius Arbo

Gaius Arbo — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:48:23 +0000

I already deciphered it. It says send money to my site. Really. Would I lie?

By: Strangely Silent: De Doc`s Ventures » Blog Archive » “Jolly Fun”?

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:17:50 +0000

[...] Tip o’ the clipboard to Patterico — and if any Institute fellows are cryptographers, please drop by and help him out with his project. [...]

By: AMac

AMac — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:32:52 +0000

(from memory): “Holy Blood Holy Grail” is the book written by the other party in the suit that Judge Smith was hearing.

By: Vermont Neighbor

Vermont Neighbor — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 09:20:10 +0000

On the other hand, anagram results for another newsworthy name are cryptically apropos:

MICHAEL HILTZIK anagrams to
‘I’m thick, ill haze.’

By: Sheldon

Sheldon — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 09:19:33 +0000

HBHG is “Holy Blood Holy Grail” — it’s an alternative Christ’s legacy book that forms the basis for the Jesus had children part of Brown’s book

By: Vermont Neighbor

Vermont Neighbor — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 09:17:25 +0000

Just for fun, I put this blog into an anagram decoder. Now taking into account the hypnotic qualities of the word soporific (as opposed to sleep related), this phrase has a pretty good twist!

PATTERICO’S PONTIFICATIONS

anagrams to:

‘SOPORIFIC PITTANCE TO SAINT’

A hypnotic site. Nuff said!

By: Pigilito

Pigilito — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 08:55:20 +0000

Found this on The Times website: The judge refers readers to a sentence in paragraph 52 of the judgment saying it would help readers figure out what he meant. That sentence reads: ``The key to solving the conundrum posed by this judgment is in reading HBHG and DVC,'' I'm guessing DVC is Da Vinci Code. I'm clueless as to the other.

By: Doc Rampage

Doc Rampage — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 07:55:19 +0000

There are 31 keys in the three alphabetic rows of a typewriter. That is, ‘a through ‘z’ and the punctuation characters “;’,./” Maybe its a substitution cypher on that set in QWERTY order.

“SMITHYCODE” could be the coded message that is solved with the cypher, or it could be a header for the cypher.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 07:14:02 +0000

Well, I don’t know if Patterico already said as much in his post, but it doesn’t appear to be a pure polyalphabetic substitution cipher. Using SMITHYCODE as a key, the remaining letters translate to:

Bmmblvvcwkhmoklyoezjcmlitobj

Whether these letters could be decrypted by using frequency analysis, I don’t know, but I get suspicious when I see doubled letters in a cipher (like “mm” and “vv.”)

By: VMC

VMC — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 05:27:14 +0000

There are 31 instances of individual italicized letters in the decision. They are, in order,

Jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzv

The words in which the letters occur, in order, are:

Jersey
able
research
this
techniques
extinguished
technical
story
was
the
something
groups
used
was
documents
being
eradicated
elsewhere
Templars
Claimants
sequence
with
of
key
Plantard
introduced
manuscripts
ultimately
questions
emblazoned
prevalent

It’s not good eyesight, btw. Copy the text, with formatting, from the Acrobat Doc, paste it into Word, and do a format search for italics. This list is probably correct

I think one may be able to make a pretty wry comment simply by stringing the words together.
Best of luck, and I’ll let you know if I solve it.
Scott