What is this graphic font?

Can anyone identify this font and tell me what (if anything) this says?

Don’t know what the font says, but common English words that match are

ALBATROSS
AVIATRESS
BOMBSHELL
CATCHPOLL
CHICKADEE
DOWDINESS
LOWLINESS
PULPINESS
TRUTHLESS

I suppose we start making some assumptions about how the sequence progresses from A to Z and see where that gets us.

My initial guess is ALBATROSS, because the big white square seems like a reasonable A, and the last four letters could be ROSS if the black square moves clockwise around as we progress from O to S (and skip the Q, for some reason. I don’t know.)

Cool guesses! But couldn’t one of those conceivably be a space?

This was my reasoning, as well. Q could also be the top two segments painted black, for one possibility of where it went. Or even a black square in the middle.

edit: Or, not, wait. The “T” is already the top two quadrants of the circle as a black square, assuming “ALBATROSS” is the right word. Given the fact that the “T” is similar in design to the letters around it, I bet this is the answer.

Just curious . . . have you ever seen a font that contains a character that represents a space?

Back in phototypesetting, we occasionally had to “no-flash” a character, in order to get the character’s width, without actually printing the character. I’m not sure whether that’s what you mean.

I tried “What The Font” but didn’t come up with it. Here’s a forum of font experts that might be able to help.

http://www.typophile.com/forum/29

The four final characters are oddly constructed. The horizontal line inside the circles isn’t exactly in the middle, and the square portion only lines up with the outside of the circle in the one where it’s in the top left.
I say it’s a custom, hand-made “font.”

No, I haven’t that I recall, but maybe there’s a font there that has this characteristic (the space having a distinct character rather than a blank).

It looks vaguely like the Zodiac killer cipher (or an extract) but I’ve searched trough all of his letters I could find and I found only a scant few similarities. Aside from that I’m stumped.

ETA:

Say, what’s the context you found this in? Could be useful.

Looks to me to be similar to a pigpen code like those ones found in kids’ books.

Do you have a web site that you used? I tackle the Crypt - o - quote occasionally.

A quick glance at omniglot didn’t turn up anything.