Following the terrorism of Sept. 11, scores of messages have cropped up crediting an unlikely source with foreseeing the attacks — Wingdings.
A number of chatroom postings, Web pages and chain e-mails claim images of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center and a message advocating death to Jews are embedded within Microsoft’s Wingdings typeface, which consists entirely of pictures and symbols.
Various would-be conspiracy theorists claim the code “Q33NY” contains fragments of one of the ill-fated planes’ flight numbers or stands for “third month of the third quarter, New York,” and, in Wingdings, resembles a plane hitting two pages, which look like buildings.
Also mentioned is that “NYC” comes out as a skull and crossbones, a Star of David and a thumbs-up in the typeface, which some have interpreted as “death to Jews is OK.”
“Holy cow!” exclaimed Yitzhak Santis, Peninsula coordinator of the S.F-based Jewish Community Relations Council, when typing both NYC and Q33NY into his computer. “This is amazing. I can only think of adjectives like ‘Wow!’ and ‘Oh my God!’ If this is intentional, it’s some pretty hateful stuff.”
This isn’t the first time computer users have inferred deeper meanings in the font, which is composed of images such as smiley faces, pointing fingers, religious symbols and flags.
Charles Bigelow, whose firm Bigelow & Holmes designed the Wingdings icons for Microsoft in the early 1990s, said he has also been contacted by numerous individuals who feel the symbols assigned to “LBJ JFK” prove Lyndon Johnson’s complicity in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The NYC configuration was noted when the font first came out in 1992. When some interpreted the death-to-Jews message in the common abbreviation for the Big Apple, the story made the front page of the New York Post tabloid.
Bigelow can only sigh when he hears the latest claims. Punching Q33NY into his computer, he remarked “Well, what you’re really getting there is an airplane and two pages of a document.”
Eric Potashner, Assemblywoman Carole Migden’s district director, recently received an e-mail from an intern regarding the NYC pattern. Puzzled, he said he planned to call a Microsoft lobbyist to get some answers.
Potashner wasn’t the only one to receive such an e-mail. The Anti-Defamation League issued a national release last Friday, stating Wingdings “does not contain hidden messages, anti-Semitic or otherwise.” The release mentions the ADL’s similar dismissal of the NYC rumor in 1992.
“Most of the leaders who worked on the project at the time were Jewish, so they were shocked themselves,” recalled Kimberly Kuresman, a Microsoft representative, regarding the ’92 flap. She pointed out that Brad Silverberg, the overall leader of the Windows 3.1 project, is Jewish.
Bigelow, a former Stanford professor who moved his company from San Francisco to Santa Monica several years ago, described the NYC and Q33NY situations as “very random.”
After creating the Wingdings graphics, Bigelow assigned the images to various keys based on their numerical values in the ASCII computer code. But, he claimed, in order to assure easier access to bullet points — which are commonly used to highlight information within a document — Microsoft retooled the keyboard mapping.
“With our original mapping, NYC was a computer monitor, a three-button mouse and a text file,” he said, referring to the Wingdings symbols. “Our mapping was equally incidental and happened to be innocuous.”
Following an inquiry led by Silverberg, Microsoft considered redesigning Wingdings but eventually ruled against it. According to Kuresman, the company felt the change would confuse users well acquainted with the font, might unintentionally lead to equally offensive patterns, and, due to printer memory of the original Wingdings version, lead to documents looking one way on screen and printing another. While Kuresman said cost was not a factor, such a repair would not have been cheap. Wary of the 1992 controversy, Microsoft programmers crafted a kinder, gentler NYC message in 1997. When one types the letters into the newer Webdings graphic font, the three images on screen are a human eye, a heart and a city skyline: “I love New York.” However, many computer users, unaware that the fonts were not created simultaneously, take the “I love New York” message as proof the “death to Jews is OK” is intentional. “I think that actually created more suspicions,” said Jonathan Bernstein, regional director of the ADL. “It’s an unfortunate situation. I don’t know what [Microsoft] could do.”
While many Web pages are claiming the Wingdings images are further evidence of the terrorists’ long-term planning or of Microsoft Corporation chairman Bill Gates’ supposed inherent evil, quite a few Internet messages deride the whole concept as ludicrous.
One Internet posting points out that, NYU comes out as “death to Jews and Christians” in Wingdings. It also jokingly warns that “YEMEN” translates as a Star of David, a pointing finger, a bomb, another pointing finger and a skull and crossbones, “clearly meaning” Israel is planning an attack on Yemen.
“You can look at Microsoft’s current fonts, and I’m sure you can find a ‘Paul is dead’ or whatever,” said Jeff Finger, managing director of Jerusalem’s WebWare Israel Ltd. A friend and former employee of Bigelow, Finger spoke with various members of Microsoft’s typeface department following the 1992 Post article.
“There is no meaning to be found in the keyboard mapping of Wingdings or any other font. I can assure you it was randomness on top of randomness.”
Bigelow, meanwhile, is clueless as to why people continue to read earth-shattering messages out of Wingdings.
“We put in all those religious symbols so people would have something handy to use. The skull and crossbones was so people would easily be able to use it for personal safety; if you want to mark something as dangerous, you can do it,” he said.
“People look at sequences of symbols and try to find meanings. I still think it’s silly — but, hey, type ‘LBJ JFK.’ Some people think that’s meaningful.”