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 | This page is not a forum for general discussion about Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes. Any such comments may be removedorrefactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes at the Reference desk. |
I've removed a bunch of crap, mostly from IPs, and added a comment to try to prevent others from adding their personal findings. If you have anything interesting that comes from a reliable source, then feel free to add it. pm (talk) 05:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any analysis data published like letter frequencies? To me it seems the "SE" is extremely frequent. I had some association this might be 'braille shorthand' where the first and last letters of words are used. (And certain combinations ALWAYS mean the same word.) Would be nice to know WHAT methods thger FBI experts have tried and what their analysis of the material yielded..--OliverGassner (talk) 10:13, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Another frequently used letter sequence is "NCBE", so it seems to me that he's substituting word or sequences by other sequences, so this is no ENIGMA style encryption where the exchange table changes after each typed letter —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.203.135.203 (talk) 22:27, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've started some basic analysis (letter frequency and comparison to English, word frequency), and done a quick post about it here: http://d122.com/murdermystery/ I've also put my code in a Github repository: https://github.com/d122/Murder-Mystery I added the link yesterday, but someone removed it. I understand that I'm not a necessarily reputable source, and there may be errors in the transcription, but I thought it is a good start. I'm collecting transcripts / theories from others around the web currently and it's all going in the Github repository. My new code is not quite polished enough to add to the repository yet, but I'll be pushing it there soon. I thought it would be good to share, hopefully we can get some insight on this collectively.
If others agree, can we share the links? (There's no adverts, I'm just curious about this and would like to share my efforts) Double122 (talk) 17:47, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've created a page with the same name on the Wikia Cryptography site to allow discussion of the notes by those who wish. I included the attempted transcription that was removed from here as original research. The page is at http://cryptography.wikia.com/wiki/Ricky_McCormick_murder_notes --agr (talk) 23:12, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Could you upload the larger images from: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery/help-us-solve-this-encyphered-note/ http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery/encyphered-note/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.190.69.78 (talk) 11:09, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Reader 244.187.193.250 asked "NEED MORE details about his life. Did he own a house? Normal hangouts? Details of the murder, etc." We have included all the details that were in the FBI press release. If you have any other reliable sources of information that would add these details, please let us know or add them yourself.--agr (talk) 16:40, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Useful article: http://www.stltoday.com/news/article_bcc02074-5b1a-11e0-b199-0017a4a78c22.html Mike74 (talk) 03:10, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I can't see any reference to a page that says what the text under "Note 1 & 2 text" says. Many letters are not clearly identifiable, e.g. the first and second letter in the second word of the first note. The "n" could be an "m", the "x" could be a "k". 80.219.27.101 (talk) 21:01, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To me it seems as if the code is a combination of a cypher and the attempts of someone with a spelling disability to write. Many people who have done manual labor all their life and written little devleop these types of own writing skills after they forget how to properly spell words. So it's not a mathematical code to crack, but more a linguistic and sociological approach. How did McCormick pronounce the words? Were there words he used frequently when talking (e.g. like, awesome, bogus etc.) which could be found in the code? There are many open questions about McCormick himself: - what did he work? - did he only write in code or did he write some "secret" stuff in code, but was able to write perfect letters etc. besides that? - are there other samples of his code other than these two fragments? What about his place, might there have been a book or something which would be the key to understand his cypher?
The number 99.84.52 is very peculiar. Looks like some type of measurement (like the size of an shelf if inches) or coordinates (latitude?). There are also syllables which do not fit the pattern of the set of other syllables and could refer to concrete names or places: KENOSO, SPRK, AOK and UTKE. XL seems to be a person, as he refers to XL'R (XL's)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Malaidoskop (talk • contribs) 23:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There is an article on the old McCormick case on SLtoday.com St Louis Today Article, Ricky McCormick Homicide, 1999
--Malaidoskop (talk) 23:00, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong, on the FBI site it says that he has used encrypted codes since his childhood. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.11.19.126 (talk) 20:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with comments above that this page should be used only for improvement of the article, and not for general discussion of the ciphers themselves. For anyone who does wish to discuss the ciphers, two good locations are:
--Elonka 16:53, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to move this article to a different title, since "Ricky McCormick murder notes", though a good descriptor, really isn't how they are being referred to in the press. More common titles (in my order of preference) might be:
Anyone else have an opinion? --Elonka 15:55, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
