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Snail Mail Project Fosters Connection Page 1
The Best Cleaning Tool Can Be Found in Your Kitchen Page 2
Don’t Let This Driving Habit Get the Better of You
Asparagus & Smoked Mozzarella Pizzettes Page 3
Why Did It Take 51 Years to Decode the Zodiac Killer's Message? Page 4
Why Did It Take 51 Years to Decode the Zodiac Killer's Message? How 3 Codebreakers Cracked a Serial Killer’s Cypher
In November 1969, a serial murderer known as the Zodiac Killer sent a mysterious message to the San Francisco Chronicle. The missive was written in a 340-character code, and no one at the newspaper could solve it. Neither could the local police or the FBI’s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit. For 51 years, the cypher sat unsolved in the unit’s records, just like the five California murders credited to its maker. Then, on Dec. 5, 2020, one of the “holy grails of cryptology” finally gave up its secrets. It wasn’t the FBI that cracked it, but a team of amateur codebreakers from around the world: American software developer David Oranchak, Australian mathematician Sam Blake, and Belgian warehouse operator/ computer programmer Jarl Van Eyck.
According to The New York Times, Oranchak spent 14 years of his life trying to break the code, but it wasn’t until his efforts connected him with the other two codebreakers in 2020 that it cracked. Blake set the dominoes in motion when he reached out to Oranchak with a fresh theory about the code. Then they connected with Van Eyck, who wrote a computer program to test their ideas. In total, the team ran more than 650,000 possible solutions through the program before landing on one that revealed snippets of phrases that made sense. Even with all that effort, Blake attributes their success to luck. “Not only were we lucky enough to find the needle in the haystack,” he said, “but we were lucky enough to pick the right haystack in order to start searching for the needle,” he told The Times.
For mystery buffs, watching the trio find that needle was one of the brightest spots in 2020. The code didn’t reveal the name of the killer, but the steps toward unlocking his taunts (including the line “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me”) were still fascinating. If you want to learn more about the code-breaking process, check out Oranchak’s five-part “Let’s Crack the Zodiac” video series on YouTube. Still want more? The Zodiac Killer’s identity remains unknown, but the FX docuseries “The Most Dangerous Animal of All” offers one fascinating theory. Watch it today on Hulu.
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