Smith Code

Doesn't mean a thing; imaginations only run wild to find something that isn't there.

Could be, might all be jibberish. Who knows, mabee this judge did it as a wind up. The fact the first part comes out with "smith code" makes me believe its not just random and why go to all the trouble of winding everyone up. Anyway, it's unsolved (at the moment) , if it's gibberish, it will remain unsolved, if there's a code to be cracked, I thought mabee someone who likes these things would enjoy the challenge.

The trick is to start a new alphabetical sequence at the point in the conventional sequence indicated by the relevant number in the Fibonacci sequence, an ancient number progression in which each number is the sum of the two numbers preceding it. The first eight numbers in it are 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21.

"Smithy Code" is left untouched - it is there to alert the reader to the existence of a hidden text.

As the first two letters then, "J" and "A" remain unchanged because they are tied to the Fibonacci numbers 1 and 1. From then on in the judge's code, the alphabet shifts down one place - so the E becomes D - (representing the Fibonacci 2), and then two places (representing the 3) and then four places (representing the 5) and so on for each of the following letters.

(Note: There are four errors in the code).

Tryagain, I was personally impressed to see that you were able to come up with any formula to figure out the "code." I thought it was jibberish to begin with. Can you tell us what it says (with the mistakes)?

Secret code cracked in Da Vinci judge's mysterious ruling


By SARAH LYALL and ED MARKS
New York Times News Service

LONDON ?- It took the lawyers-cum-cryptographers from the Olswang law firm here most of Wednesday and Thursday, and a good many hints from Justice Peter Smith, to crack the secret coded message the judge playfully concealed in his ruling in the recent Da Vinci Code copyright case.

The answer to the puzzle Smith called the "Smithy Code" was a simple phrase, an homage to Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher, known as Jackie, credited with modernizing the British Navy in the early 20th century. The phrase, confirmed by the judge, was: "Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought."

News of the hidden code traveled around the world on Wednesday, and the Olswang team was hardly the only one working to crack it. A rival local crew from the Times of London almost won. Smith awarded bragging rights to Olswang ?- led by Daniel Tench, the partner who was the first person to publicly point out the strange typographical anomalies in the judge's 71-page Da Vinci Code ruling ?- because Olswang found not just the right answer, but a deliberate misspelling within it.

"Jackie Fisher was England's greatest admiral after Nelson, and was responsible for the creation of the Dreadnought, which was launched nearly exactly 100 years to the day of the start of the trial," the judge, 53, wrote in an e-mail message. "Nevertheless, he has been airbrushed out of history."

Among Smith's hints, he told decoders to look at page 255 in the British paperback edition of The Da Vinci Code, where the protagonists discuss the Fibonacci Sequence, a famous numerical series in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. Omitting the zero ?- as Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code author, does ?- the series begins 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.

Solving the judge's code requires repeatedly applying the Fibonacci Sequence, through the number 21, to the apparently random coded letters that appear in boldfaced italics in the text of his ruling: JAEIEXTOSTGPSACGREAMQWFKADPMQZVZ.

For example, the fourth letter of the coded message is I. The fourth number of the Fibonacci Sequence, as used in The Da Vinci Code, is 3. Therefore, decoding the I requires an alphabet that starts at the third letter of the regular alphabet, C. I is the ninth letter regularly; the ninth letter of the alphabet starting with C is K; thus, the I in the coded message stands for the letter K.

But the judge mischievously inserted two twists to confound code-breakers. The first is a typographical error: a letter that should have been an H in both the coded message and its translation is instead a T. The second concerns the number 2 in the Fibonacci series, which becomes a requirement to count two letters back in the regular alphabet, rather than a signal to use an alphabet that begins with B. For instance, the first E in the coded message, which corresponds to a 2 in the Fibonacci series, becomes a C in the answer.