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44-Character Block Structure

Discrete blocks, not a periodic cipher — block-by-block alignment evidence from five prefix groups — NEET INTEL, 2026

1. The question

The alignment explainer established that best-fit pairwise offsets between same-prefix EAM messages cluster at multiples of 44. But why multiples of 44? Two hypotheses:

  1. Periodic cipher: A repeating key or mask with period 44. Position i and position i+44 are always governed by the same key element. Shifting by 44 re-aligns the key, so all overlapping blocks should match at similar rates.
  2. Discrete block structure: Messages are composed of independent 44-character blocks. Two messages share some blocks in common; a shift of ±44 brings a shared block into alignment. Only the shared block pair matches well — the adjacent block pairs are unrelated and match at near-random rates.

The discriminating test: when two messages align at offset ±44, do all block pairs match at similar rates, or does one block pair dominate?

2. Five examples, five prefix groups

Each example shows a message pair whose best sliding alignment is at a multiple of 44. The overlapping region is broken into 44-character blocks and compared block-by-block. Green highlighting marks shared blocks (high match rate); dimmed blocks are unrelated content that happens to be adjacent.

JC — 194 chars (2023-08-19) vs 142 chars (2023-07-23) — offset −44 46 matches
Msg A (JC7GEW…) — 194 chars, 4.4 blocks:
Msg B (JCP3HW…) — 142 chars, 3.2 blocks:
BV — 216 chars (2024-11-20) vs 142 chars (2024-12-22) — offset −44 42 matches
Msg A (BVREUD…) — 216 chars, 4.9 blocks:
Msg B (BVXGWN…) — 142 chars, 3.2 blocks:
YP — 246 chars (2025-06-14) vs 216 chars (2025-07-15) — offset −44 49 matches — 1 month apart
Msg A (YPNIX3…) — 246 chars, 5.6 blocks:
Msg B (YPXVAZ…) — 216 chars, 4.9 blocks:
N2 — 268 chars (2025-02-16) vs 164 chars (2025-02-04) — offset +44 47 matches
Msg A (N2ETDU…) — 268 chars, 6.1 blocks:
Msg B (N2HEFP…) — 164 chars, 3.7 blocks:
LO — 172 chars (2024-01-31) vs 142 chars (2024-02-14) — offset +44 33 matches
Msg A (LOEIVY…) — 172 chars, 3.9 blocks:
Msg B (LOX7XZ…) — 142 chars, 3.2 blocks:

3. Summary across all five examples

In every case, the match rate is concentrated in one or two block pairs; the rest fall to near-random levels (~3% expected for a 32-character alphabet). A periodic cipher would produce roughly uniform match rates across all block pairs.

Prefix Offset Block pair Match rate Shared?

4. Conclusion

Verdict
Discrete 44-character block structure, not a periodic cipher.

The evidence shows that EAM messages are composed of sequences of 44-character blocks. Messages with the same prefix share some blocks in common, but these shared blocks can appear at different positions within each message. A shift of ±44 brings a shared block into alignment, producing a spike in the match count — but only for that specific block pair.

This rules out a simple periodic cipher with period 44: such a cipher would re-align its key at every ±44 shift, making all overlapping positions equally likely to match, not just one block-sized region.

The picture that emerges: messages are built from a vocabulary of 44-character blocks, with block insertion or deletion shifting shared blocks to different positions across messages.

Analysis: NEET INTEL, 2026. Data: publicly intercepted HFGCS EAM broadcasts, 2022–2026. Block-by-block decomposition of pairwise alignment at multiples of 44. See also: 44-char alignment explainer, block vocabulary.