
The Zodiac killer’s thirteen-symbol cipher (Z13) has resisted formal solution for over half a century. This study does not present a speculative plaintext or guessed name. Instead, it demonstrates that Z13 is a structural remainder of the 340-symbol cipher (Z340) once inherited constraints from the earlier Z408 system exhausted all legal moves.By tracing adjacency, motif, and homophone pressure across the canonical 17×20 Z340 grid, the analysis shows that the cipher’s internal lattice terminates in a closed corridor at Row 14, Columns 10–17 — yielding the stable pattern NANNANLA.The result reframes Z13 not as a miniature cipher but as the physical artifact of constraint collapse.
Cryptanalysis, Zodiac Cipher, Z340, Z13, homophone system, Cryptography, structural collapse, cipher inheritance, constraint modeling, Zodiac Killer
Cryptanalysis, Zodiac Cipher, Z340, Z13, homophone system, Cryptography, structural collapse, cipher inheritance, constraint modeling, Zodiac Killer
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