(18-03-2019, 10:49 PM)DonaldFisk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (18-03-2019, 09:55 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (18-03-2019, 06:18 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm playing with it, so I hope that Don doesn't publish a solution until somebody gets it right.
I will be very impressed by whomever manages to decrypt it and identify the source, because I have looked up every single significant text of the 14th and 15th centuries that I can think of or identify, and I haven't found a single one that begins with a letter pattern that would match Donald's ciphertext. I'm sure I'm missing something, obviously, but this is a pretty interesting challenge.
There's an error in your reasoning, and when I wrote "roughly contemporary" I meant plus or minus a century.
This is an interesting thread, as we're looking at the problem from the other end: instead of trying to decrypt the text, we're looking at ways of encrypting texts, i.e. putting ourselves in the shoes of whoever created the Voynich Manuscript.
Aha! You also have a suffix for a space between words, as you mentioned that the word breaks are significant.
In this case, the beginning of your text must be the beginning of Machiavelli's
Il Principe:
"Tutti gli Stati, tutti i dominii ..."
The repetition of "Tutti ", including the space after it, matches the repetition of "qodom qodeey otaiin", and then in the second one the following word "i " including the space after it, explains the repetition "otaiin otaiin". And the "i+space" sequences at the end of "gli " and "Stati " explain the additional occurrences of "otaiin" as the 5th and 8th words.
(18-03-2019, 10:49 PM)DonaldFisk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (18-03-2019, 09:55 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (18-03-2019, 06:18 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm playing with it, so I hope that Don doesn't publish a solution until somebody gets it right.
I will be very impressed by whomever manages to decrypt it and identify the source, because I have looked up every single significant text of the 14th and 15th centuries that I can think of or identify, and I haven't found a single one that begins with a letter pattern that would match Donald's ciphertext. I'm sure I'm missing something, obviously, but this is a pretty interesting challenge.
There's an error in your reasoning, and when I wrote "roughly contemporary" I meant plus or minus a century.
This is an interesting thread, as we're looking at the problem from the other end: instead of trying to decrypt the text, we're looking at ways of encrypting texts, i.e. putting ourselves in the shoes of whoever created the Voynich Manuscript.
A creator is well-known men,but the question still same"The reason of writing down in an unknown language"It's just a school book with short stories and readable ...every single word(without sick theories) but the reason!...probably those"lost" last pages only can tell us....
I wish I had time to decipherDon's code, but I pop in, scan-read, blast a quick note, and then I have to run until the next moment when I have to save files or compile and have a few moments free.
Rene and Don, don't publish solutions yet, if you don't mind. If people are willing to wait, I'd like a chance this weekend to see if I can work them out (assuming the weekend ever comes, I've been trying to get a weekend off since December, global commerce sux).
(19-03-2019, 01:49 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wish I had time to decipherDon's code, but I pop in, scan-read, blast a quick note, and then I have to run until the next moment when I have to save files or compile and have a few moments free.
Rene and Don, don't publish solutions yet, if you don't mind. If people are willing to wait, I'd like a chance this weekend to see if I can work them out (assuming the weekend ever comes, I've been trying to get a weekend off since December, global commerce sux).
JKP, I hate to toot my own horn, but I believe I have already deciphered Don's code. When I wrote that the beginning of Don's text must be the beginning of Machiavelli's
Il Principe, that meant that I claimed that I had solved the whole thing:
"Tutti gli Stati, tutti i domini che hanno avuto, e hanno imperio sopra gli uomini, sono stati e sono o Repubbliche o Principati. I principati sono o ereditari, de' quali il sangue del loro Signore ne sia stato lungo tempo Principe, o e' sono nuovi."
Geoffrey
Geoffrey, you could have posted that as a spoiler so other people would have a chance when they have time.
(19-03-2019, 02:49 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Geoffrey, you could have posted that as a spoiler so other people would have a chance when they have time.
I'm sorry JKP, I'm still new around here, still a lowly "Reputation: 0", and I guess I haven't learned all of the etiquette about these things yet. I hadn't seen any other separate "spoiler: solution" threads or posts, so I hadn't thought about that.
But you know, I worked very hard to decrypt Don's cipher, and it would also be nice to get a compliment or congratulation for my achievement. (I do understand it's overnight for many folks and they haven't seen it yet.)
Geoffrey
I didn't mean to sound harsh, Geoffrey and I think you have to add the spoiler tag manually (which you wouldn't have known).
Sometimes I sound brittle because I jump in, read fast, respond fast and then I'm gone again.
(19-03-2019, 05:05 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I didn't mean to sound harsh, Geoffrey and I think you have to add the spoiler tag manually (which you wouldn't have known).
Sometimes I sound brittle because I jump in, read fast, respond fast and then I'm gone again.
No hard feelings JKP. Thank you for the heads up about the spoiler tag, I will look into it and learn how to use it.
When I decipher the whole Voynich ms, I will make sure to add the spoiler tag here, so that other people have a chance to finish solving it themselves
Geoffrey
In case people are curious about how I identified the plaintext for Don's ciphertext, it was a little bit of cryptography and a lot of philology. By philology I mean "relentless online research". Since I had mentioned 14th and 15th centuries and then Don clarified "within a century of the ms parchment dating", that pretty much gave away that it had to be an early 16th century text. So I found a very convenient list of them here:
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Eventually of course I arrived at Machiavelli and
The Prince. Now the English Wikipedia only has links to English translations:
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But the Italian Wikipedia page for this work is more useful:
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And at the bottom of the page, it says, "Wikisource contiene il testo completo de
Il Principe"
And from here it is a few more clicks to the text I was seeking:
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Whereupon one finds the text of the beginning of
Il Principe.
And by connecting the repetition of "tutti" with the repetition of phrases at the beginning of Don's ciphertext, it is immediately clear that this has to be the plaintext.
I deliberately wasn't going down the route you took, as I felt I would have more fun doing it head on. But don't worry about the spoiler.