Dan Brown in the latest book, The lost Symbol presents the order eight Franklin square on page 389 thus:

52     61     4     13     20     29     36     45

14       3     62     51     46     35    30    19

53     60       5     12     21       28     37     44

11      6     59       54    43     38     27     22

55     58      7     10        23      26      39     42

9      8     57     56     41       40     25      24

50      63      2      15      18      31       34      47

16     1     64     49      48      33       32         17

Writes Dan Brown, “Mal’akh studied Franklin’s famous creation- a unique arrangement of the numbers 1 through 64- in which every row, column and diagonal added up to the same magical constant. “

Each row and column numbers add upto the magical constant 260 but the diagonals do not add upto that constant per se. The left diagonal numbers are: 52, 3, 5, 54, 23, 40, 34, 17 which add up to 228 ; the right diagonal numbers are: 45, 30, 28, 43, 10, 57, 63, 16, which add up to 292. However, bend the diagonals as Franklin did and it does. The bent diagonal numbers are 52, 3, 5, 54, 10, 57, 63, 16 (Left Bent Diagonal) and 45, 30, 28, 43, 23, 40, 34, 17 (Right Bent Diagonal). Each of these bent diagonal numbers add up to 260.

Further, intersting in the above Franklin Square is the difference between the right diagonal summation and the left. It is 64 (292-228). That is again quite magical as it is the number of square cells in the 8*8 order.

If the 64 symbols later are reorganized by the character Mal’akh in the book, as implied, according to the bent diagonal summation pattern of Franklin, readers are still intrigued how was this done. Dan Brown, Please Help! !