Da Vinci judge's secret code revealed

Mystery solved. It was the admiral. A secret code embedded in the text of a court ruling in the case of Dan BrownÕs bestseller ÒThe Da Vinci CodeÓ has been cracked. But, far from revealing an ancient conspiracy, it is simply an obscure reference to a Royal Navy admiral.

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 judgement by italicising letters scattered throughout the 71-page document. In BrownÕs book, a secret code reveals an ancient conspiracy to hide facts about Jesus Christ.

The judgeÕs own code briefly caused a wave of amused speculation when it was discovered by a lawyer nearly a month after the ruling had been handed down. But the lawyer, Dan Tench, cracked it after a day of puzzling. The judgeÕs code was based on the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical progression discussed in the book.

ÒAfter much trial and error, we found a formula which fitted,Ó wrote Tench, who had nothing to do with the Brown case but discovered the italicised letters when studying the ruling. The judgeÕs secret message was: ÒJackie Fisher, who are you? Dreadnought,Ó Tench wrote in The Guardian.

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 early in the 20th century.

ÒThe message reveals a significant but now overlooked event that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial,Ó the judge said in a statement. He said that he was not normally much of a fan of puzzles. ÒThe preparation of the code took about 40 minutes and its insertion another 40 minutes or so,Ó he wrote.