Apr 28, 2006
Built in Code in Da Vinci Judgement
Mr Justic Peter Smith who recently presided over the alleged plagiarism UK case concerning Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (it should really be The Leonardo Code, of course) and the “non-fiction” The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail turns out to be something of a wiggy wag.
Smith italicised a couple of dozen characters in his judgement which cleared Brown of the charges. So what, you might ask? Well, Smith is something of a code maker himself and confided in a Guardian journalist (once the lawyers finally spotted the wheeze) that the italics “don’t look like typos, do they?”
So here are those very letters:
j a e i e x t o s t g p s a c g r e a m q w f k a d p m q z v
The Register says Smith “will cough” as soon as someone figures it out. Be nice if it were a Sciencebase reader – let me know if you crack it!
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May 2nd, 2006 at 8:41 am
The Daily Telegraph had a feature about the Da Vinci Code Code on Saturday that claimed the solution is not so straightforward and that deliberate typos, missing z’s and other anomalies point to something yet more intriguing than has so far been revealed…but then it was rival paper The Guardian that broke the story of the Code Code, so maybe they’re in denial.
April 28th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Unfortunately, we were beaten to it…
From the BBC:
The message read: “Smithy Code Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought.”
The judge admires Admiral Jackie Fisher, who developed battleship HMS Dreadnought, which launched in February 1906, 100 years before the case began.
In a statement, Mr Justice Smith said: “The message reveals a significant, but now overlooked event that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4953948.stm
April 28th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
If you read Nr. 52 of the judgment, the following phrase catches the eye:
“The key to solving the conundrum posed by this judgment is in reading HBHG and DVC.” Intereting, eh?
I tried various variants of the Vigenere cipher using different keys like HBHGDVC, HOLYBLOODHOLGRAILDAVINCICODE and SMITHYCODE, without any results. Any ideas?
PS: interesting coincidence: The “smithycode” takes 30 characters, so does “HOLYBLOODHOLGRAILDAVINCICODE”. May be a link…