[align=left]Broken: The Code in the 'Da Vinci Code' Ruling [/align]


[align=left]By SARAH LYALL and ED MARKS
Published: April 28, 2006
LONDON —* It took the lawyers-cum-cryptographers from the Olswang law firm here most of Wednesday and Thursday, and a good many hints from Justice Peter Smith, to crack the secret coded message the judge playfully concealed in his ruling in the recent “Da Vinci Code” copyright case.[/align]

[align=left]
The answer to the puzzle Justice Smith called the “Smithy Code” was a simple phrase, an homage to Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher, known as Jackie, credited with modernizing the British Navy in the early 20th century. The phrase, confirmed by the judge, was: “Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought.”

News of the hidden code traveled around the world on Wednesday, and the Olswang team was hardly the only one working to crack it. A rival local crew from The Times of London almost won. Justice Smith awarded bragging rights to Olswang * led by Daniel Tench, the partner who was the first person to publicly point out the strange typographical anomalies in the judge’s 71-page “Da Vinci Code” ruling * because Olswang found not just the right answer, but a deliberate misspelling within it.

Justice Smith, 53, said via e-mail Thursday that it took him just 40 minutes to prepare his code and another 40 or so to insert it in his ruling. He seemed to regard its unveiling as a victory for the reputation of Fisher, whom he lists as one of his “recreations” in his “Who’s Who” entry, along with football, military history, and the British Titanic Society.
“Jackie Fisher was England’s greatest admiral after Nelson, and was responsible for the creation of the Dreadnought, which was launched nearly exactly 100 years to the day of the start of the trial,” the judge wrote in an e-mail message. “Nevertheless, he has been airbrushed out of history.”

Among Justice Smith’s hints, he told decoders to look at page 255 in the British paperback edition of “The Da Vinci Code,” where the protagonists discuss the Fibonacci Sequence, a famous numerical series in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. Omitting the zero * as Dan Brown, “The Da Vinci Code” author, does * the series begins 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.

Solving the judge’s code requires repeatedly applying the Fibonacci Sequence, through the number 21, to the apparently random coded letters that appear in boldfaced italics in the text of his ruling: JAEIEXTOSTGPSACGREAMQWFKADPMQZVZ.

For example, the fourth letter of the coded message is I. The fourth number of the Fibonacci Sequence, as used in “The Da Vinci Code,” is 3. Therefore, decoding the I requires an alphabet that starts at the third letter of the regular alphabet, C. I is the ninth letter regularly; the ninth letter of the alphabet starting with C is K; thus, the I in the coded message stands for the letter K.

The judge inserted two twists to confound codebreakers. One is a typographical error: a letter that should have been an H in both the coded message and its translation is instead a T. The other is drawn from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," the other book in the copy right case. It concerns the number 2 in the Fibonacci series, which becomes a requirement to count two letters back in the regular alphabet rather than a signal to use an alphabet that begins with B. For instance, the first E in the coded message, which corresponds to a 2 in the Fibonacci series, becomes a C in the answer.

“If the judge’s motive was to draw attention to a long-lost war hero, then he’s done it very effectively,” Mr. Tench of Olswang said late on Thursday.

As for Justice Smith, he said via email that he is not especially interested in codes. “I hate crosswords,” he wrote, “and do not do Sudoku as I do not have the patience.”


Sarah Lyall reported from London for this article and Ed Marks from New York.[/align]