It's been about 24 hours, and no one could figure out the code (or that I know of). Many of you came close, and some made some very interesting suggestions that I may use in the upcoming book.
The correct answer was indeed a phone and a calculator. The phone is the more important of the two items. Using the phone, you were able to find out which letters were represented by each number.
1= nothing
2= abc
3= def
4= ghi
5= jkl
6= mno
7= pqrs
8= tuv
9= wxyz
But J.J., 1 doesn't mean anything and it's used a lot!
This is fixed with the use of the second item, the calculator. If you noticed, the pattern on the phone is this:
123
456
789
On the calculator, the button setup is this:
789
456
123
The bottom and top rows are switched. The Ripper switches the values of the numbers to match that of the calculator. So:
1=7
2=8
3=9
7=1
8=2
9=3
This allowed the Ripper to further complicate the code even if the FBI discovered that the phone was the source of the numbers, but discouraged the idea because the number 1 is used. This however makes the number 7 unused, and serves as a big clue.
Now that the FBI has the correct code, there's still work to do. Even though they have the code, they must still be able to find out which letter is the correct letter that the number is representing.
I hope this makes the decoding easier for you guys. Happy decoding.
