The Voynich Ninja

(12-08-2021, 04:28 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The option (3), look for a 1 to 1 match between raw EVA and a plaintext makes no sense to me.

Yes, that is exactly what my question was aimed at. Option three would be reduced to pattern recognition at best but it would be practically like looking for the "needle in the haystack".

For example, I believe I have seen a correlation between EVA "dy" and "is" in various experiments, but I can't even reasonably justify why myself. The results are just too diffuse.

(12-08-2021, 02:04 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do I see it correctly that any "known-plaintext attack" cannot work because in the EVA transcription the assignment of the letters is "arbitrary" ?

Well, there's arbitrary - and then there is 'arbitrary'. Obviously the little, circular VMs glyph is called EVA-o because it *looks like* the standard letter "o". Other VMs glyphs have been treated similarly. The purpose of EVA is to get VMs text on paper via the Qwerty keyboard. However, as I understand it, no phonetic, alphabetic, numerical, linguistic or other sort of interpretation should be read into the VMs glyphs on the basis of their 'arbitrarily' imposed EVA transcription.

Given that we know next to nothing about how to join EVA strokes into actual glyphs, a very significant aim of the block paradigm is to find exactly that out.

(12-08-2021, 02:04 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do I see it correctly that any "known-plaintext attack" cannot work because in the EVA transcription the assignment of the letters is "arbitrary" ?

I can get at least 30 Eva words that are meaningful in Slovenian. Even if the EVA letters are arbitrary, they were chosen with great care.

I experimented with various transliterations and various plain-text passages.

The input EVA sequence I use in this example is (where 'b' stands for the initial '/'):

oboas,oetchy osas,aram askeeody ochdor,al oekairy ytodaro opalshy orarodar yky,dar ykodar ykary opalxy

The following is a homophonic verbose cipher that maps to these words from Wycliffe's translation You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

heuene wente awei as a book wlappid in

Spaces were ignored in both the cipher-text and plain-text.

Deciphered text:

ob   oa   soe  tchy  osa sar   am   ask  eeo  dyo  ch
H     E   U    E      N   E    W     E    N    T   E
                                           
dor    alo    ek  air    yy  toda  roop  
A      W      E    I      A    S    A
                                     
als  hyo  ra rodar ykyda ryko dary ka ryo pa lxy
B    OO   K   W     L      A   PP  I   D  I   N


Sorted by plain-text characters:

Of course, this only shows that a short passage in combination with complex cipher systems does not allow an unambiguous solution.

@MichelleL11
Almost right. You are confusing the "r and s".
"Berck and Ynsel"   Berg und Insel  /mountain and island.

The text reads something like this." Great winds close the sky, like folding a book shut. It literally pushes mountain and island steadily before it."


Der Text lautet sinngemäss in etwa." Grosse Winde schliessen den Himmel, als würde man ein Buch zu klappen. Es schiebt regelrecht Berg und Insel vor sich stetig her."

If this German version really references a codex book instead of a scroll, it can probably be a excluded a priori right?

Hi, again, what I meant is that EVA can be very useful for attacking the VM text. I started with short word, like DAR which is transcribed the saw in most proposed transcription alphabets. It appears in VM about 200 times as a separate word, and additionally 150 times in combinations with various prefixes and suffixes. In Slovenian, DAR means 'gift', 'offering'.
Then look for the combination of words DAR DAL or DAL DAR. This is Slovenian means 'gave gift' or 'will give gift', used with singular masculine verbs for past and future tense. The word DAL occurs in the VM over 160 times, not counting the combinations and various derivations of this word.
To confirm this meaning, you then look for prefixes and suffixes that can be found in Slovenian language, most frequent prefixes being O, PO, OD, PRE. See if you find any in the words DAL or DAR.
After establishing the DAR/DAL relationship, look for other grammatical forms of DAL. Most frequent in Slovenian language are DAM (for 1. person writing, characteristic for poetry) and DY (Voynich DY stands for dialectal Slovenian translation DJ (DAJ, DEJ). In order to find DAM word, I needed to read the VM minims as Dr. Bax proposed - by assuming that IIN stands for M. Since according to DR. Bax, IIN could also be W or IV, there is a possibility that not all DAM words are DAM, but they can also be DAIW. In Slovenian, both ending could be applied to DAM words (DAM / I give, DAIW -DAJAU /was giving). The word DAM appears over 600 times in the VM. A lot of 1st person writing.
More on this can be found on my blog 
voynichslovenianmystery.com
I would appreciating your attack on my theory

(11-08-2021, 09:51 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Circular text is extremely common, but spiral text is rare in medieval manuscripts, and I don't know of a single other example of spiral text in the sky.

I just had to jump in here with something I just found. Koen, I thought I couldn't find any other examples of spiral text in the sky, despite lots of searching, but then I found something (entirely by accident when I was searching for something else, funny how that happens sometimes)... This is a detail of the Last Judgment from a ceiling mosaic of the Florentine Baptistery, late thirteenth century. According to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where I found it, the angel "leads the elect in the direction of the portal to the New Jerusalem" and the text is an inscription from Matthew: "VENITE BENEDICTI PATRIS MEI / POSSIDET PARATUM" ("Come, Blessed of my father, inherit [the kingdom] prepared [for you]") So it's not the bible verse that the exercise of this post is about, but, I think, notable that this example of a spiraling text in the sky is closely related to the same themes.

[attachment=5747]

An interesting example. This might be more akin to the medieval "speech bubble" known as the banderole. They were frequent throughout the Middle Ages.





Your example is much more spiraly than anything I've seen before though, and also more explicitly like a full-size scroll.