Da Vinci Code Message Revealed

Ironsides writes "The message embedded in the Da Vinci Code ruling earlier this week has been cracked. The message reads 'Smithy Code Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought' and is a reference to an event from about 100 years ago. The encryption scheme itself was based on the Fibonacci number Sequence which is the same one used in the novel."

"An event"?

[stjobe]

From TFA:

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."

Uh?

[CCFreak2K]

Maybe I'm just ignorant, but the article is about someone's own Da Vinci-like code, not THE DaVinci code, as the title/summary suggests.

Another fine Slashdot entry?

The message read

[rollonet]

All Your Base Are Belong To Us I kid I kid. There is a very interesting article on Wikipedia about the Smithy Code right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithy_code [wikipedia.org] The code was a little underwhelming though :(

Re:The message read

[rollonet]

Righto. All the formatting went wack. What I meant to say was:/

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

I kid I kid.
There is a very interesting article on Wikipedia about the Smithy Code right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithy_code [wikipedia.org]
The code was a little underwhelming though imo:(

An event indeed.

[Gorath99]

"John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, RN (January 25, 1841 - July 10, 1920), commonly known as "Jackie" Fisher, was a British admiral known for his efforts at naval reform. He had a huge influence on the Royal Navy in a career spanning more than 60 years, starting in a navy of wooden sailing ships armed with muzzle-loading cannon and ending in one of battlecruisers, submarines and the first aircraft carriers. The argumentative, energetic, reform-minded Fisher is often considered the second most important figure of British naval history, after Lord Nelson."

"The sixth HMS Dreadnought of the British Royal Navy was the first battleship to have a uniform main battery, rather than having a secondary battery of smaller guns. She was also the first large warship to be powered by steam turbines, making her the fastest warship of her size. So advanced was Dreadnought that her name became a generic term for modern battleships, whilst the ships she made obsolete were known as "pre-dreadnoughts". Her introduction helped spark off a major naval arms race as navies around the world rushed to match her, particularly the Germans in the build up to the First World War."

Taken from wikipedia.

Article Devoid of Facts

[zaguar]

The article failed to mention how he solved it. It was a Polyalphabetic Cipher [wikipedia.org] with the key being the Fibonnaci sequence. For those who want to crack it, the sequence of numbers for the key is 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 etc, in recursive form: T(n+1)=T(n)+T(n-1)

Re:ummm...

[SachiCALaw]

I am a lawyer, and to put it succinctly, no, being a fan of the book would not be grounds for reversal. Judges cannot have financial interests in cases, and should not have personal entanglements with parties, but reading a party's book is not such a personal entanglement that would be ground for reversal.

No, wrong key...

[Junta]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithy_code [wikipedia.org]
There is a twist on the sequency not quite being the Fibonacci sequence. Evidently, a twist derived from the Holy Blood, Holy Grail work.

If you don't want to work through it, they even give python code so you can see the 'jackie fister who are you dreadnough' decode for yourself.

For those C# programmer out there

[Anonymous Coward]

Appologies about the messy code - I had to get around the spam filter's whitespace detection. Here's a bit of C# code to decode the string...

using System;
using System.Text;
 
namespace SmithyCode
{
class Program
{
    const string INPUT = "JAEIEXTOSTGPSACGREAMQWFKADPMQZVZ";
 
    static char[] _alphabet = { 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z' };
    static int[] _fibonacci = {1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21};
 
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < INPUT.Length; i++)
        {
            Console.Write(Decrypt(i, INPUT[i]));
        }
 
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
 
    static char Decrypt(int i, char c)
    {
        char decoded = '?';
        int f = _fibonacci[i % _fibonacci.Length];
        int leterIndex = GetIndexInAlphabet(c);
 
        if (leterIndex != -1)
        {
/* turn 3rd index negative */
            if (i % 8 == 2)
            {
                f *= -1;
                f++;
            }
 
/* calculate index of alphabet */
            int x = (leterIndex + (f - 1));
 
/* if out of bounds (neg) wrap to end of alphabet */
            if (x < 0) x += _alphabet.Length;
 
/* modulo the alphabet position if out of bounds (pos) */
            if (x >= _alphabet.Length) x %= _alphabet.Length;
 
            decoded = ((f == 1) ? _alphabet[leterIndex] : _alphabet[x]);
        }
        return decoded;
    }
 
    static int GetIndexInAlphabet(char c)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < _alphabet.Length; i++)
            if (_alphabet[i] == c) return i;
        return -1;
    }
}
}

Re:An event indeed.

[Duhavid]

You have a good point, but, the biggest idea was the uniformity
of weaponry. For America, there was little point in moving to
turbines just yet as the fleet speed would still have been low,
and only two ships of this class would be built.

Warships1.com rates South Carolina and on as Dreadnought battleships,
and as does Hazegray.org, specifically not lumping them in with
the pre-dreadnoughts. Hazegray had this to say: ( about the South Carolina class )

"The first US dreadnoughts, and by design the first all-big-gun ships in the world. However, they were directly developed from the predreadnought designs, and were quite conservative in many areas; as a result, they were not as effective or satisfactory as other nations' first-generation dreadnoughts. During WWI they served with the predreadnoughts in secondary roles."

Warships1's rating may well be based on the commission date being after
Dreadnought's, so I dont know what kind of weighting to give that.

So, classification wise I have yet to see anything that
rates them as pre-dreadnought, but your point is a very good one.