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!