Another 'Da Vinci' Code Cracked
Lawyer, Paper Decipher Riddle In U.K. Judge's Ruling
-
Play CBS Video Video 'Da Vinci' Trial Mystery The judge who presided over "The Da Vinci Code" trial really got into the spirit of things. It turns out the court ruling has some secrets of its own. Richard Roth reports.
-
Video Opus Dei Vs. 'Da Vinci Code' Dan Brown's bestselling novel, "The Da Vinci Code," has stirred up a lawsuit, criticism from the Catholic Church, and apparently many misconceptions about the group Opus Dei. Russ Mitchell explains.
-
Video 'Da Vinci Code' Author Wins A London court has closed the book on plagiarism charges against the author of "The Da Vinci Code." A judge found Dan Brown didn't steal from the authors of another book. Charlie D'Agata reports.
-
-
Judge Peter Smith (CBS/The Early Show)
-
Dan Brown at a writer's talk in Portsmouth, N.H., April 23, 2006. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
-
Dan Brown, author of 'The Da Vinci Code', leaves The Royal Courts of Justice in London during his copyright trial in March, 2006. (AP)
-
-
Photo Essay Cracking The 'Code' Photos from the London set of the "The Da Vinci Code," where Ron Howard is bringing the novel to film.
-
Interactive Eye on Religion Find out more about the beliefs, practices and history of some of the world's major religions.
-
Special Report In Print Find out more about the latest books and what best-selling authors are working on.
London lawyer Dan Tench and The Times newspaper on Friday both claimed to have solved the riddle of a code embedded in a judge's ruling in "The Da Vinci Code" copyright lawsuit.
It reads: "Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought."
The message was created by Peter Smith, the High Court judge who presided over the copyright infringement suit brought by authors of the nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" against the publisher of Dan Brown's mega-selling thriller.
Smith's entry in society bible "Who's Who" lists him as a fan of John "Jackie" Fisher, a 19th-century admiral credited with modernizing the British navy and developing its first modern warship, the Dreadnought.
On April 7, Smith ruled that Brown had not copied from the earlier work for his book, which has sold more than 40 million copies since it was published in 2003.
London's legal world has been in a whirl since it was revealed earlier this week that Smith had encoded a message within the 71-page judgment. A sequence of italicized letters was sprinkled throughout the text, with the first 10 spelling out "Smithy code" — an apparent clue, and a play on the judge's name.
The rest of the letters seemed random: jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzvz.
Italics are placed in strange spots: The first is found in paragraph one of the 360-paragraph document. The letter "S" in the word claimants is italicized, The Early Show reports.
In the next graph, claimant is spelled "claiMant," and so on.
Tench, who brought the code to the world's attention last week, said the key lay within the pages of Brown's thriller.View the ruling and take a crack at breaking the code yourself.
At one point Brown's cryptographer hero Robert Langdon explains the Fibonacci sequence — a mathematical progression that involves adding a number to the two numbers before, so that 1 is followed by 1, then 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. That sequence, when repeated and substituted with letters from the alphabet, spells out the cryptic message.
"It's extremely curious that he would reference an obscure military figure," Tench said of the message early Friday. "None of us were guessing that."
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
- CBSNews.com on Digg
More From Entertainment
