You invite Jones over to discuss the latest developments. Two heads are better than one, You reason.
After brewing a pot of Breakfast Blend, You and your friend discuss the case. Jones tells You that Mike Wilson is a known spy. He had been arrested one or two times on minor capers in the past. The cell phone call You received was traced to somewhere in the New York/New Jersey area, but the CIA could not be specific due to problems that have developed recently with various satellites used for monitoring these things.
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Jones: So let’s discuss what we learned from Winston. If it is accurate, and we have no reason to believe he was lying, then we know that the spies refer to this as the “Bee” code.
You: Right. However, I should say we don’t know what kind of “Bee.” In the transcript I texted you, I wrote “Bee” out of convenience. But actually, it is more likely it was just “B” the letter. Of course, it could be “Be” or even I suppose “Bea” as in “Aunt Bea.”
Jones: (Snort) Somehow I doubt it is “Bea” as in “Aunt Bea.” Let’s not bring The Andy Griffith Show into this.
You: Actually Barlow’s last code and case had a number of Andy Griffith references in it. I realized this some months after we solved the whole thing. But I suspect we can leave Opie and Andy out of this code problem.
Jones: OK. Our best guess is “B.” What else did we learn?
You: Well, Winston said we are not to simply remove the bolded letters. OK. I figured there was probably more going on with those letters than that. He also said that the bold letters were not the real spaces. I have to admit that surprised me. It seemed a logical conclusion based on the location of the bold letters in the sentences. So that’s out. But if that conclusion is wrong, we still need an explanation for the pattern that led us in that direction in the first place. Hmmm…
Jones: Right. Anything more?
You: Winston also said that the coded word lengths were correct, and that we did not have to respace the messages.
Jones: And by that he means?
You: It may mean that we have to take the entire code lettering and spacing at face value. Though that may be reading too much into it.
Jones: Well, if the word order were somehow wrong, but the words themselves were right, I suppose You could say that the same thing. If one wanted to encode “ZOMBIES WILL ATTACK TOMOROW” and You encoded it as “ATTACK TOMORROW WILL ZOMBIES” and then had some method to let the solver know proper word order, then the spaces and words would be correct, but not the order.
You: True. Or say the code involved extra words with a “bee theme”. You might have “ZOMBIES WILL ATTACK TOMORROW” encoded with an extra word or two. Say: ZOMBIES QUEEN WILL ATTACK HIVE TOMORROW DRONE" Then once one solves the code, the extra Bee words would have to be removed. And after removing the extra words and the spacing and coded word lengths are still correct.
Jones: So what can we actually determine from Winston’s comment about spacing and words?
You: Sigh. I am not sure. But I think we can assume that if the encoder wanted to use the word ZOMBIE, the rules of the code would mean that the encoded word given us must be six letters long —bolded letters included. I believe we will not have to re-figure the spacing. But somehow I still don’t completely trust that the message is such that we can definitely say that ZOMBIES WILL ATTACK TOMORROW must be encoded in a single sentence with a 7, 4, 6, 8 pattern.
Jones: So we are really back to square one. And the zombie apocalypse could be in full swing by this time next week.
You: Well, we still have to answer the question of the opening letter sequence. Why no code starting with “Z.” Of course we could simply be missing that coded message…
Jones: True.
You: And we have to answer the question as to why the letter distribution is so close to common distribution— yet one message has an abundance of Q’s while another is strangely J-rich and Q-poor.
Jones: And what about Brown? Did he really notice anything of significance. The poor man. He so wants to be a top code breaker. He even has one of your old maxims framed on the wall of his office. “A Good Code Breaker Counts Everything” is what it says. I sure hope Brown recovers. I miss working with him. Cooper and White are both decent folks, but they just are not as sharp as Brown.
You: Hmmm. And we did count everything here. We counted letters, and boldings. I figured out percentages. I think I counted everything there is to count. But I wonder…
Jones: Well, I’ll leave You to wondering. I’ve got a meeting with the President. He’s not in a very good mood after the election, but I don’t suppose it will matter too much who is in charge of Congress if zombies are overtaking the Earth.
You wish Jones well. There is so much to consider. And You keep having a feeling that You were at some point very close to cracking the code. So close that if Barlow knew what You were thinking, he would have been fearful that You were just about to halt his plans. But You have had so many ideas and thoughts. Which one was the one that was so very close to giving the whole game away?
You: Arrgh!!!