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Extreme Fun
with the Da Vinci Code
by Ernest
Entrada
Do you love codes like I do?
Have you read the Da Vinci Code, by author Dan Brown? Can you even wait
till May 17 when the Da Vinci Code movie comes out?
And have you been following
the hilarious developments after the closing of the lawsuit accusing Dan Brown
of plagiarism? The judge in the trial, Mr. Justice Peter Smith (known now to
code-lovers simply as “Smithy,”) loves a good joke. If you read the Da Vinci
Code you will recall the cleverly worded verses hiding encoded messages that
safely sent messages to future generations across the years. Mr. Justice Peter
Smith took delight in embedding his own secret code into the 71 page ruling on
the case that he wrote.
The first part of the secret
code spells out “Smithy’s code.” Smith did this by italicizing these 11 letters
one a time in different words. Of course, the italics looked odd, and lawyer
Dan Tench noticed it. Not only he but many in the legal community in London
started poring over the document to find the strange italicizations.
London
lawyer Mark Stephens was quoted as saying, "Life in London has ground to a halt
because everyone, barristers, solicitors, partners, managing partners, legal
secretaries, is working on deciphering it."
The first italicized part was
easy enough to decipher, but then came the hard part. The other letters didn’t
seem to follow any particular pattern and they weren’t recognizable as words.
They were: jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzvz. Smith himself said in his ruling
that the key lay within the book itself.
Smith used the Fibonacci
sequence to encode his message. This famous mathematical sequence was used and
explained in the book. In the novel, Robert Langdon, who is a cryptographer
describes the mathematical progression of numbers and how it can be used to
write a code by repeating it and substituting the letters of the alphabet.
In the Fibonacci sequence you
add the previous number to the number you’re on to get the next number. Thus,
the sequence goes: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.
Justice Peter Smith explained, "The first letter is identified by rewriting the
alphabet stating at the first letter in the alphabet, i.e. for the first letter
A When 21 is reached the code reverts back to 1, etc., and repeats that until
all the letters are substituted."
What
was Smith’s message? You’d never guess in a million years. It was: "Jackie
Fisher who are you Dreadnought." What the heck does that mean?
Actually, Smith is a military historian. Admiral Jackie Fisher is the man who
introduced the first modern British battleship, the HMS Dreadnought. Obscure
enough to anybody else, but it was a lot of fun for Peter Smith.
Of course, cryptography has
attracted hordes of new followers since the wildly popular Da Vinci Code
first came out. In fact, it has exploded on the internet.
How about you? Want to try
your hand at encrypting some nugget of trivia using the Fibonacci sequence?
It’s fun! I’ve been putting every spare moment into leaving encoded messages
around the house. At first my family was sure I’d gone off the deep end, but by
now even my 8 year old can do it. I’ve got to admit that my family has gone
rabid over encryption, and it’s all my fault. It’s better than video games!
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