World News for Students of English

18-12-2020 15:00

The Australian mathematician, Samuel Blake, and two other cryptologists finally solved an encrypted message written by an unnamed serial killer 51 years ago.

The three men tried several hundred thousand incorrect ways of solving the cipher, and just by chance, they found a way that it could be solved. In the end, they got the entire message out from the Zodiac Killer; however, solving the cipher did not reveal the killer’s identity, and it did not give a lot of clues as to who he might be.

The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an American serial killer who operated in Northern California in the 1960s and 1970s. The killer sent a series of letters and cards, including four ciphers, to San Francisco newspapers. He claimed to have committed 37 murders; however, investigators agreed on only seven victims, two of whom survived.

Difficult words: cryptologist (an expert in the study of secret systems of words or numbers), encrypted (a piece of information that is written in a special code so that only certain people can read it), cipher (a secret way of writing), pseudonym (a name which someone uses instead of his real name).

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