Umbrella academy subway code
So the way my brain works, I love a puzzle. ADORE a puzzle. So seeing that encrypted language all over the subway in season 4? It gave me an itch in my brain that needed to be solved. Playing around with it, it looked like a substition cipher, simple switch for letters and symbols. But with any TV show and props, there is a chance that someone in the prop department just threw together something random.
However. When I started looking, excluding the subway station names, there were 26 unique symbols. Which couldn't be a coincidence.
I started off by giving each symbol a letter, and then looking at frequency analysis. This got me some of the way there, (managed to get THE as a consistent correct pattern) but for less common letters the system fell apart. I was shown an image from the propstore auction (thanks @hansodax) so decided to focus on just this.
By doing the conversion to letters and then running again through a frequency analysis it was looking consistent with english. A couple of runs through a substition cipher decrypter and the word time line popped out. Just some manual clean up then needed.
Here are my translations for some of the graphics we see in the season
Prop images are from the umbrella academy auction items on prop store.
The timeline is important for your sanity. But there is no way to game the system. All will be revealed. When the answer is obvious the solution will be achieved. Until then the timeline must be respected.
I thought this was random until the incredible @hansodax thought to translate it.... It means loneliness. I'm 90% sure this still is from the first timeline they go to. The one where original Five is alone. Holy shit!
and the lettering on the subway car itself is also random, as using the same encryption just gives nonsense. I did suspect that might be the case given that the same symbols are repeated over and over on diferrent signs. Just in case I did invert, but upside down it doesn't match the alphabet.
Other signs used appear to be multiple letters and some new symbols mashed together:
I suspect a proper language was created for the initial prop of the map, and then the symbols used to decorate other surfaces without meaning behind them. Another consideration is that there are numbers in the mixed together symbols, but these are often harder to crack.
