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| Britain |
| Da Judges Code has been cracked |
| 2006-04-28 |
| A SECRET code embedded in the text of a court ruling in the case of Dan Brown's bestseller The DaVinci 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 plagiarised his book, had embedded his own secret message in his judgment by italicising 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 after a day working on it, the lawyer, Dan Tench, said he'd cracked it. 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, a lawyer who had nothing to do with the Brown case but discovered the italicised 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. Judge Smith has not made any public comment, but Tench wrote that the judge had e-mailed him to confirm he had guessed the secret code right. |
| Posted by:Oztralian |
| #4 Anon1 - not that i am aware of. Do i know you ? :P |
| Posted by: Oztralian 2006-04-28 19:38 |
| #3 I'd go for a mistrial. The judge seems like he was a little too close to the case. |
| Posted by: DoDo 2006-04-28 12:52 |
| #2 So we've got a judge commenting here also? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-04-28 11:58 |
| #1 Do I know you, Oztralian? I am a little sus on your last choice of stories. |
| Posted by: anon1 2006-04-28 11:54 |