Latest Da Vinci mystery: judge's own secret code

Latest Da Vinci mystery: judge's own secret code
Thu Apr 27, 2006 8:11 AM ET

By Peter Graff

bond (Reuters) - Three weeks after a British court passed
judgment in
the copyright case involving Dan Brown's bestseller
"The Da Vinci Code,"
a lawyer has uncovered what may be a secret message buried
in the text
of the ruling.

Lawyer Dan Tench noticed some letters in the judgment had
been
italicized, and it suddenly dawned on him that they spelled
a phrase
that included the name of the judge: "Smith
code."

Justice Peter Smith, who during the trial displayed a sense
of humor
unusual in the rarified world of bewigged barristers and
ancient
tradition, appears to have embraced the mysterious world of
codes and
conspiracy that run through the novel.

"I thought it was a mistake, that there were some
stray letters that had
been italicized because the word processor had gone
wrong," Tench told
Reuters.

Tench initially told The Times newspaper that apparently
random letters
in the judge's ruling appeared in italics. Wouldn't it be
clever if the
judge had embedded a secret message in the text? The Times
ran a jokey item.

"And then I got an e-mail from the judge," said
Tench.

He sainessto told him to look back at the first paragraphs.
The
italicized letters scattered throughout the judgment spell
out:
"smithcodeJaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz."

Those in the first paragraphs spell out "smith
code."

But what does the rest mean?

The novel, and upcoming movie starring Tom Hanks, are about
a secret
code that reveals ancient mysteries about Jesus Christ.

Smith, who ruled that author Brown had not plagiarized his
hugely
popular thriller from another book, "The Holy Blood
and the Holy Grail,"
has so far not given any clues to his own mystery code.

For now, the judge is not speaking. His clerk said he is
refusing
interviews. She would not confirm whether there truly was a
secret
mystery embedded in his judgment.

But she did confirm that he is, generally speaking, a
humorous type of
person.

Da Vinci judge's secret code revealed
Fri Apr 28, 2006 8:25 AM ET

By Peter Graff

bond (Reuters) - Mystery solved. It was the admiral.

A secret code embedded in the text of a court ruling in the
case of Dan
Brown's bestseller "The Da Vinci Code" has been
cracked, but far from
revealing an ancient conspiracy it is simply an obscure
reference to a
Royal Navy admiral.

British High Court Justice Peter Smith, who handed down a
ruling that
Brown had not plagiarized his book, had embedded his own
secret message
in his judgment by italicizing letters scattered throughout
the 71-page
document.

In Brown's book, a secret code reveals an ancient
conspiracy to hide
facts about Jesus Christ.

The judge's own code briefly caused a wave of amused
speculation when it
was discovered by a lawyer this week, nearly a month after
the ruling
was handed down.

But the lawyer, Dan Tench, cracked it after a day of
puzzling. The
judge's code was based on the Fibonacci sequence, a
mathematical
progression discussed in the book.

"After much trial and error, we found a formula which
fitted," wrote
Tench, who had nothing to do with the Brown case but
discovered the
italicized letters when studying the ruling.

The judge's secret message was: "Jackie Fisher, who
are you?
Dreadnought," Tench wrote in the Guardian newspaper.

Judge Smith is known as a navy buff, and Fisher was a Royal
Navy admiral
who developed the idea for a giant battleship called the HMS
Dreadnought
in the early 20th century.

Tench wrote that the judge had e-mailed him to confirm he
had guessed
the secret code right.

The judge later confirmed the existence of the code, and
revealed that
the Fibonacci sequence was indeed the secret to its
solution.

"The message reveals a significant but now overlooked
event that
occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the
trial," he
said in a statement.

He said that he is not normally much of a fan of puzzles,
such as the
Japanese number puzzles that have become an obsession of the
British press.

"The preparation of the Code took about 40 minutes and
its insertion
another 40 minutes or so," he wrote. "I hate
crosswords and do not do
Sudoku as I do not have the patience."