A few days ago, a Chicago police officer, Lt. John Lewison, claimed to have solved the Zodiac’s 32-cipher in this article. Lewison has not made his solution public yet, pending review by local cryptography experts and possibly the FBI – although he’s indicated that his alleged solution reveals the location in which the killer intended to plant his bus bomb as well as the killer’s initials.

There is a low probability that Lewison’s solution is correct, given the history and nature of this and the other ciphers authored by the Zodiac. Furthermore, this cipher is so short (32 symbols) and has so few repeated symbols (3 symbols occur two times in the ciphertext – all other symbols occur exactly once) that validating any potential solution will be difficult unless it can be validated through supporting, collateral information. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see Lt. Lewison’s solution. For that, we will, apparently, have to wait…