The Voynich Ninja

Hi! 

I was listening to another video about the manuscript today and in the QnA section, someone asked: "What motivations would there be for creating it as a hoax with random gibberish?"

I wasn't too impressed with the answer, and instead it got me thinking the complete opposite way: If you are writing a book on [botany/women's health/astronomy/etc] and you want to encode it, why create such an incredibly difficult to crack cipher? 

As I was thinking about this, I was reminded of the Zodiac ciphers from the 1970s. I'm sure most cipher nerds know that the Z-340 was cracked about four years ago now. It was cracked through a computer brute forcing every imaginable way to encode a text, and eventually, after the computer had cracked it, the investigators realized that not only had Zodiac used a highly sophisticated way of scrambling letters; he had made mistakes! So it was only possible to crack a very difficult cipher with mistakes through brute force computer. How is it that that the Voynich Manuscript has survived even longer, and more importantly, why the need to create this level of difficult cipher?  

If all you are doing is hiding information about botany, why do you need to go to such lengths as the scribes did? Iirc both Alan Turing and the guy who cracked the Japanese code in WW2 worked on the manuscript (and failed), so, if you're a 14th century botanist who wants to hid information about your plants, why do you need a cipher that is more difficult to crack than the Germans and Japanese used in a world war? 

There is a really good video about the Z-340 cipher here on YouTube (link below). Looking at that, the sheer power of computer brute force solving, I am feeling less and less that there is any meaning to the text. And I ask: "why the need to create such a complex cipher?" 

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afaik, there is no evidence that Alan Turing ever worked on the vms.
However Brigadier John Tiltman did work on the vms and he was at Bletchley Park.
Both Tiltman and Turing worked on the Lorenz Cipher at Bletchley Park but not at the same time, so perhaps this is the source of the Turing misclaim.

(17-11-2024, 04:07 PM)addekallstrom Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I was thinking about this, I was reminded of the Zodiac ciphers from the 1970s. I'm sure most cipher nerds know that the Z-340 was cracked about four years ago now. It was cracked through a computer brute forcing every imaginable way to encode a text

"a computer brute forcing every imaginable way to encode a text" doesn't sound like an accurate description of how Zodiac 340 was solved. From You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

Quote:Blake [...] responded to Oranchak’s talk with mathematical ideas about how to approach a code that includes both homophonic substitution — in which one letter might be swapped for more than one symbol — and transposition — in which letters are reordered in a systematic way. Oranchak and Blake began corresponding and eventually generated hundreds of thousands of possible ways to read the code.

Other ciphers by the killer had already been solved. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. looked similar: it was a homophonic substitution, without word spaces. The solvers assumed that Z340 was a more complex variant, in which the characters were not presented in the original order, but had been rearranged somehow. So they tried a number (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) of regular transpositions and fed each to a software designed to crack homophonic ciphers. They were then able to pick those solutions that appeared to contain meaningful fragments and they could fix the encoding errors and come to a complete solution. Though 650,000 can sound like a large number, it really is a tiny fraction of the different imaginable ways to encode a text. Software tools were essential to the task, but the solution depends on researchers making the right hypotheses about the cipher.

In the case of Voynichese, we don’t know if it is a cipher, and if it is we have no idea of what kind of cipher it could be: Z340 is similar to Z480, but Voynichese isn’t similar to any late-medieval cipher. Moreover, the underlying language is unknown, which of course adds a further layer of uncertainty for cryptographic approaches.

Choneve chohwit choditionaltra choherscip chothe choodingdec chois qoostalm qoaysalw qa chohmuc choemor choficultdif choktas chontha chothe qoodingenc choand choetimessom choall choit choestak chois choan qosualunu choor choghtlysli qoeredalt qoodingenc chohanismmec choto choemak choit qoersord choof chonitudemag choderhar chofor choall chowe chowkno chothe chonichvoy choms choldcou chobe qoodedenc qongusi qa choset choof choplesim qoy-to-followeas choganographicste chohniquestec chottha chobemay qoeknownstunb choto chothe qohor(s)aut chowedske chothe chotisticssta choway choemor chontha choythe choldcou choehav qoginedima choto chomthe choit chomay choehav qoneve chonbee choewhatsom qoyeas choto choodedec choit chokbac chobut chofor chous chowho cho'tcan chodrea choany choof choit choand cho'tdon choehav qa choglesin choeclu qoutabo chothe choway choit chowas choeratedgen chowe chocan qoyonl choemak chossesgue qoumptionsass choand chokwor chomfro chorethe chothe choklac choof choilarsim chouscriptsman chomfro chottha choetim chothe chotfac qosit' choinitelydef chonot qa choernmod choguagelan choesmak chothe choktas qoneve choderhar choand chonot choto chotionmen chothe chotfac choit choldcou chobe choberishgib chohwit chotlelit choto chono choningfulmea chottex choheredcip chotsoeverwha
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Even with traditional ciphers, the decoding is almost always a much more difficult task than the encoding, and sometimes all it takes is an unusual or slightly altered encoding mechanism to make it orders of magnitude harder.

For all we know, the Voynich ms could be encoded using a set of simple, easy-to-follow steganographic techniques that, maybe unbeknownst to the author(s), skewed the statistics way more than they could have imagined. To them, it may have even been somewhat easy to decode it back, but for us, who can't read any of it and don't have a single clue about the way it was generated, we can only make guesses, assumptions and work from there.

The lack of similar manuscripts from that time, the fact it's definitely not a modern language, makes the task even harder. And not to mention the fact it could be gibberish, with little to no meaningful text ciphered whatsoever.

(17-11-2024, 04:07 PM)addekallstrom Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view...... 
If all you are doing is hiding information about botany, why do you need to go to such lengths as the scribes did? Iirc both Alan Turing and the guy who cracked the Japanese code in WW2 worked on the manuscript (and failed), so, if you're a 14th century botanist who wants to hid information about your plants, why do you need a cipher that is more difficult to crack than the Germans and Japanese used in a world war? 

  It is definitely not all about botany, but about healing, making of the medicines, and explaining processes. This information was considered highly secret in the middle ages and passed usually from father to son, or from teacher to a worthy pupil.
  Do not underestimate the creativity of the ancient wise men. I know of at least two other cyphered ancient documents, which without knowledge what is the content behind, you cannot read them at all.
  One of them is the Psalms from the Bible. If I ask nowadays why should the "Psalms" be cyphered and wonder - the 14 -century Christian will know it immediately- because of the Osman conquerors, being Islamists chased after Christianity. 
Many monks started secret writings of the Sacred texts to avoid the burning of their documents and their monasteries.
   Maybe the cipher-man of VM was afraid of the Inquisition (with all these naked figures), or who knows?
BR

I have posted an opinion about this in my thread called Fakery. Here, I will summarize. The botanicals are either totally imaginary, or interpreted from a description. Whoever described them to the scribe, could market the same information to others elsewhere for profit. Hence the scribe's obfuscation by encryption makes little practical sense. 

Too, there were multiple instances of these unidentifiable botanicals. Since they do not actually exist, the artist could sketch them before writing about them. For ordinary people, the magic memory number is 7 plus or minus 2. This implies either the scribe wrote details in his native tongue so,as not to confuse his plants, or there was no description at all. If the former, the scribe could construct an alphabet, a grammar and a cypher taking as long as desired, limited only by actually forgetting to write that which was learned in talk. For me, that suggests a hastily constructed cypher based on imaginary invented commentary. What would it be about? Health, fertility, pleasure, certainly. That has aways been marketable.

What makes economic sense is writing and selling a hastily constructed manuscript of whimsy, nonsensical pictures and writing designed to intrigue, challenge, relieve boredom  and sell for a quick profit. Look who has owned it!

(17-11-2024, 04:07 PM)addekallstrom Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."What motivations would there be for creating it as a hoax with random gibberish?"

One possible reason falls into place if you consider what society was like at that time. The 15th century was a time of great change, was the start of the cultural movement that later became the Renaissance. It was a time of new ideas, new philosophies. The classical views of the universe were being challenged. The secrets of alchemy and chemistry were being probed. Belief in witchcraft was strong.

The manuscript could have been written to create a deception, to make people believe that there was some distant land where they used a strange alphabet and where their knowledge of herbal medicine, astrology, witchcraft and other secret magic was advanced. Any claim that the secrets had been discovered would have been of immense curiosity. A manuscript of these secrets would have been greatly prized, and the possessor of it might have been able to command a substantial profit.

Voynich manuscript doesn't have to be a complex cipher.

See for example:
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It certainly isn't rocket science but if you don't know the source book then you are practically hopeless.

For me the Voynich Manuscript may be something like book cipher - a colllection of numbers pointing to some words on the list. It is extremely hard to break if for example "herb" is 97, "flower" is 520 and "leaf" is 343

(08-01-2025, 07:08 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Manuscript may be something like book cipher

But why the strange alphabet? Encryption using some book cypher could have been made simply with the local language, with no need for an invented script. Also was it really necessary for every word in the manuscript to be written in V, and that none of it could be written in the local language? Even the one word labels of the celestial objects? Did the meaning of every single word have to be hidden from a third party? 36000 words all had to be laboriously book-cyphered?

It doesn't take a highly complex system. The combination of two variable systems based on different methods plus an obscure dialect may be sufficient.