People are really not paying enough attention to the fact that Bill and Ford’s substitution ciphers share certain symbols between them. Like man, in a Watsonian billford context that is so fucking gay.
As you can see here, common symbols include:
• triangle with a vertical line (‘I’ in Bill’s, ‘L’ in Ford’s)
• rhombus (‘W’ in Bill’s, ‘N’ in Ford’s)
• semi-circle with a vertical stem (‘O’ in Bill’s, ‘P’ in Ford’s)
and so on.
I can’t quite recall if we were ever given any information as to how either of these ciphers came to be, but my personal headcanon is that Bill and Ford spent hours brainstorming together in the Mindscape, constantly bickering over which symbols to use to represent each letter, which could explain why there are clear disparities between the two ciphers.
Furthermore, at certain points Bill also uses a combined cipher of both his own symbols and Ford’s symbols. (‘partners’ indeed)
