Comments on: Da Vinci Code Inspires Judge

Da Vinci Code Inspires Judge

tiamat — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:06:45 -0800

"Smithy code" The secret lies in HBHG and DVC. According to news reports the Judge who recently ruled in the Da Vinci Code plagiarism case has included his own code in his high court ruling (PDF). At this time, no one seems to have decoded it all...

By: terpsichoria

terpsichoria — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:25:54 -0800

That's completely fantastic - I'm fascinated as to what he put in there (even if he did do it as a bit of fun, a mystery's still a mystery) - thanks for the link!

By: grobstein

grobstein — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:42:15 -0800

Reminds me of Judge Alex Kozinski's decision in US v. Syufry (anti-trust suit against a theater owner), which incorporated the titles of more than 200 Hollywood movies.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:45:29 -0800

OJ DID IT!

By: unsupervised

unsupervised — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:54:02 -0800

Why isn't he considered biased for doing this?

By: edgeways

edgeways — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:58:54 -0800

crypoto mystery Amused judge pens jumble code creates fun headline

By: edgeways

edgeways — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 19:00:26 -0800

biased how? He obviously had to read the texts to make a ruling, in his ruling he used (presumably) methods within those texts to have a small amount of fun. I personally think it's great.

By: tiamat

tiamat — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 19:20:46 -0800

unsupervised, biased in favour of whom? The key is apparently requires reading both "HBHG and DVC", and both books involved codes and ciphers, so there's really no way to say he's favoring the style of one book over the other by putting a code in the ruling. grobstein, that's the single funniest judicial ruling I've ever read, the close second being the one throwing out the case against "Satan and his staff", due in part to the lack of jurisdiction and the plaintiff not supplying instructions on where/how to serve the summons. (I couldn't find the actual ruling.)

By: Maxson

Maxson — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 19:25:15 -0800

It's like Justice Blackmun quoting "Casey at the Bat" in Flood v. Kuhn. Judges don't have to wear permanent scowls all the time, so long as their decisions have properly grounded legal reasoning.

By: jedicus

jedicus — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 19:39:58 -0800

My favorite is a little footnote from a bankruptcy court judge's response to a badly written (and titled) motion. It's on page 2 here.

By: tiamat

tiamat — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 19:54:46 -0800

When I posted this I thought people would go for the 'solve the code' angle, but the 'funny things judges do' angle is turning out to be pretty damned funny. Thus is the power of Mefi.

By: ori

ori — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 19:58:30 -0800

10 bucks says it decrypts to "stop wasting your goddamn time reading junk and playing spy"

By: I Love Tacos

I Love Tacos — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:10:44 -0800

jedicus: that is fucking fantastic.

By: jayder

jayder — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:34:22 -0800

Another zany opinion: U.S. v. Abner, 825 F.2d 835 (5th Cir. 1987), which contains titles (as section headers, no less) to numerous Talking Heads songs. It's discussed here.

By: dial-tone

dial-tone — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:35:48 -0800

It's a sailboat.

By: jayder

jayder — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:36:23 -0800

More precisely, it is here.

By: Kickstart70

Kickstart70 — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:40:41 -0800

Where is the code? Am I missing something?

By: thecaddy

thecaddy — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 22:33:05 -0800

Remember to drink your ovaltine.

By: ford and the prefects

ford and the prefects — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 23:05:56 -0800

Man, if more legal decisions were written like this, there's a good chance I'd make my parents very happy and go to law school. Three cheers for Judge Smith!

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:06:26 -0800

Come on, guys! Surely if we band together, we can break this code together? Or we can just sit back and let the lazyweb work for us - someone will post it to AskMe.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:07:02 -0800

(Two togethers together to emphasize the togetherness.)

By: languagehat

languagehat — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:24:39 -0800

Reminds me of Judge Alex Kozinski's decision in US v. Syufry (anti-trust suit against a theater owner), which incorporated the titles of more than 200 Hollywood movies. That was a clever idea, and I enjoyed looking through the decision -- but I would have enjoyed it more if whoever went through it linking the movie titles had been a little less determined to squeeze in as many as possible. It's ridiculous to highlight words like it and out as though they were cleverly incorporated titles. Using those rules, you could make any decision look like this. Me, I would only have used phrases (two words or more), and tossed the single-word small fry back. I eagerly await the solution to the Smithy Code. Internet, do your stuff! *looks at watch, drums fingers*

By: empath

empath — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:45:10 -0800

the code is: smithcodeJaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz

By: runkelfinker

runkelfinker — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:55:08 -0800

It's not a simple Caesar cypher...

By: Silki

Silki — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:59:38 -0800

empath, I think you may have missed a couple. I get smithycodeJaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzv I got those by copy/pasting the formatted text and saving as RTF, then searching the raw RTF for italics. I discarded any italic section that included more than one letter.

By: tiamat

tiamat — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 07:08:34 -0800

With any luck the Judge will have been trying to make a point about using good encryption, which is to say this thing will have been done in a one time pad that he plans to reveal only after he's retired.

By: inigo2

inigo2 — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 07:08:53 -0800

Off-topic, but -- there was also this humorous judgement (well, footnotes in the judgement). (Or use the direct PDF Link). Part of it reads: "The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch "hoe." A "hoe," of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden's response. We have taken the liberty of changing "hoe" to "ho," a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps "You doin' ho activities with ho tendencies.""

By: tiamat

tiamat — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 07:41:58 -0800

inigo2, what thread have you been reading? I'm pretty sure that IS the topic now. ;)

By: majick

majick — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 09:01:17 -0800

"It's a sailboat." It's a schooner.

By: dial-tone

dial-tone — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:17:40 -0800

You dumb bastard. It's not a schooner... it's a Sailboat.

By: greycap

greycap — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:08:29 -0800

There is no Easter Bunny!

By: Dasein

Dasein — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:48:14 -0800

This is very cool. Thanks for noticing this tiamat. I'm thinking Mefi should undertake either a competition or a collective effort to solve this. But I'm too busy to post to Meta right now.

By: nlindstrom

nlindstrom — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:25:11 -0800

There fnord is fnord no fnord code.

By: Creosote

Creosote — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:38:17 -0800

The solution: Smithy Code Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought. (Unless the Times are tossing us a red herring...)

By: Silki

Silki — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 21:57:45 -0800

I tried the Times's solution (assuming the Fibonacci value of 1 meant no change) and this is what I get. There may be something I'm missing, but it doesn't work for me.

j	10	01	10	j
a	01	01	01	a
e	05	02	06	f
i	09	03	11	k
e	05	05	09	i
x	24	08	31	e
t	20	13	32	f
o	15	21	35	i
s	19	01	19	s
t	20	01	20	t
g	07	02	08	h
p	16	03	18	r
s	19	05	23	w
a	01	08	08	h
c	03	13	15	o
g	07	21	27	a
r	18	01	18	r
e	05	01	05	e
a	01	02	02	b
m	13	03	15	o
q	17	05	21	u
w	23	08	30	d
f	06	13	18	r
k	11	21	31	e
a	01	01	01	a
d	04	01	04	d
p	16	02	17	q
m	13	03	15	o
q	17	05	21	u
z	26	08	33	g
v	22	13	34	h
z	26	21	46	t

By: flashboy

flashboy — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 05:42:38 -0800

It's explained at http://www.thesmithycode.com/ - there's two typos, and for some reason the third letter of every sequence is shifted in the opposite direction to the others. See also.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 05:58:40 -0800

Then, oddly enough, dial-tone was pretty close!

By: ND¢

ND¢ — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 08:22:04 -0800

More.

By: tiamat

tiamat — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:37:55 -0800

That was pretty quick. I bet even the NSA couldn't have done any better.

By: Silki

Silki — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 17:05:27 -0800

And The Smithy Code