The Voynich Ninja

I too am new to the VMS, with a stronger interest in the text itself. I don't know your professional background, and it's clear you've been lurking the forum a bit, but anyway, here's what I'd suggest everyone wanting to tackle the text should do IMHO:

1. Don't expect to solve the VMs in the near future, even if at times you feel you're onto something
   
2. Learn about paleography; the different handwriting scripts/styles around the time of the radiocarbon dating for languages such as Latin, Romance and Germanic languages, Greek, maybe English. I'm not sure about other language families.
   
3. Get an overview of medieval herbals; have a look at some of them mentioned here in this forum.
   
4. Learn about some statistical laws of texts and ciphers, learn about the concepts of Entropy and Conditional Entropy (Information Theory, not Thermodynamics)
   
5. Read most (if not all) threads in the Analysis of the text forum and Marginalia, even the old ones
   
6. Read the work of other researchers *
   
7. Keep up with the latest research in other areas (e.g. illustrations, provenance, etc) - even if it's not what interests you the most
   
8. Attack the text (try to find patterns or lackthereof, put hypothesis to the test)
   

Of course, it's not something anyone could do in a couple of weeks. You never stop learning new stuff and researching when dealing with the VMs.


* Off the top of my head, here a short sample of my personal (biased) pantheon of Voynich sages, hallowed be their names alia+ma+ria :
René, D'Imperio, Currier, FSG, JKP, Koen, EMS, MarcoP, Stolfi, Pfeaster, Pelling

There are plenty other people submitting some interesting ideas, shower thoughts and discoveries. Although tremendously helpful, don't limit yourself to whatever's posted on this forum, a lot of people keep their own personal blogs and websites up to date with their latest work.

According to a long established tradition we should hijack this thread and start arguing about some minor points. Sorry, but that's the way it is 

(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Learn about paleography; the different handwriting scripts/styles around the time of the radiocarbon dating for languages such as Latin, Romance and Germanic languages, Greek, maybe English. I'm not sure about other language families.

Why? Voynichese is obviously an invented script, the vellum has been dated, so it's very likely no older than early 1400s. Knowing that the scribe was probably familiar with Humanistic minuscule gives zero new information. I frankly cannot reliably tell Currier A from Currier B, and I'm quite happy knowing that there are people out there who can and do investigate all these hands and scribes, but I won't pretend being able to understand something that I don't.

More generally, I think it makes sense to thoroughly learn things that are relevant to your line of investigation, but it's quite enough just to be aware that some other domains exist without trying to cover everything.

(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Get an overview of medieval herbals; have a look at some of them mentioned here in this forum.

Again, I've seen maybe about 20 various medieval herbals, mostly when I was trying to find potential signature matches for the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. squiggle. The only thing relevant to text analysis that I learned was that occasionally words would split into individual letters to accommodate for stems and branches in herbals, there is nothing unusual about this. I know nothing about plants, so I won't even try guessing. And I probably should be ashamed, but I still have no idea which of the plant drawings in the Voynich MS was confused with a sunflower. I mean, there are a few sunflowery plants there, and I don't really care which one it was.

(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Learn about some statistical laws of texts and ciphers, learn about the concepts of Entropy and Conditional Entropy (Information Theory, not Thermodynamics)

Strong agree here. It's very hard to find the right model for Voynichese, if you don't know what's wrong with Voynichese in the first place.

(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Read the work of other researchers

...at least be generally aware of who's doing what. I think it's perfectly fine to not know the details of a particular investigation if it lies quite far from what you are doing, but it definitely helps to understand who to follow if you need more information on a particular topic. Most VMS knowledge (beyond what's available on voynich.nu) has not been properly codified, so you have to remember at least a few (nick)names.

(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Keep up with the latest research in other areas (e.g. illustrations, provenance, etc) - even if it's not what interests you the most

Or ignore it completely, if there is definitely no overlap and you are not looking for more clues. I strongly believe that in some cases focus is more important than the scope of knowledge. There is always the tradeoff of digging in versus looking around, you can't do both at the same time.

(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Read most (if not all) threads in the Analysis of the text forum and Marginalia, even the old ones

Read those that you find interesting/relevant 

Yeah, I'll take a number seven, over easy. There really are two major aspects here. There's the manuscript and there's the language. In the first, one can definitely gain some understanding of where the manuscript is apparently coming from. There are illustrations and there is provenance. As far as the Voynichese language, those are deeper waters. The writing system has been analyzed every which way and no one can read a vord. Some people think they can. It's natural to try and see patterns and make connections - but it doesn't work in EVA.

You don't mention what are your current skills:

- do you have some experience with statistics
- do you have some experience with computer programming
- do you have some experience with linguistics
- do you know Latin or German
- do you have some knowledge of medieval herbals, alchemy or astronomy books
- do you have some experience with cipher breaking

and so on.

The problem with Voynich Manuscript is that all this stuff is relevant and probably necessary to eventually crack VM. Of course a single man cannot be an expert in all these fields. So if ever VM is cracked, it will be a result of the work of many people. Even if just one man does it, he will be still using results of many others.

So answer yourself what is your forte or which area is especially interesting for you. And try to have some decent knowledge of everything but be really good in something. Then make an attack on VM from your angle.

And read what others established so far  This part is somehow "boring" for many people who just  jump to their solution without learning "state of the art".

(06-02-2025, 06:41 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Learn about paleography; the different handwriting scripts/styles around the time of the radiocarbon dating for languages such as Latin, Romance and Germanic languages, Greek, maybe English. I'm not sure about other language families.

Why? Voynichese is obviously an invented script, the vellum has been dated, so it's very likely no older than early 1400s. Knowing that the scribe was probably familiar with Humanistic minuscule gives zero new information. I frankly cannot reliably tell Currier A from Currier B, and I'm quite happy knowing that there are people out there who can and do investigate all these hands and scribes, but I won't pretend being able to understand something that I don't.

More generally, I think it makes sense to thoroughly learn things that are relevant to your line of investigation, but it's quite enough just to be aware that some other domains exist without trying to cover everything.

I agree that it being an invented script, it's not strictly necessary to learn these things in order to have a shot at decoding/debunking it. But we do see some symbols and handwriting style that was similar to what was used in plaintexts at the estimated time of writing, and many people, especially those coming from a purely statistics/computational background, may not initially be aware of this.

I think that the symbols themselves could potentially give us an insight into what the scribe(s) were thinking about when coming up with this script. Do they use abbreviation symbols as a subterfuge in order to make us think it's a syllabary? Were they thinking of a certain letter or phoneme when adding a macron over qo or y? I think having at least a superficial knowledge on this topic can only improve the odds at figuring out the nature of script or any encoding mechanism - not to mention that if it turns out to be a cipher involving any transposition at all (which we don't know for a fact it doesn't), any would-be decipherer would find it handy to be able to read some of the characters.

At least if I was tackling some, say, chinese version of a VMs, I would find it productive to learn any cipherglyph that may also be used in plaintext, instead of just treating each glyph as random strokes and potentially missing out on a hint.

I wholly agree that there's probably no need to become a lifelong expert on it, and that eventually you'll just be met with the fact that the text reads like gibberish, but some base knowledge on the topic doesn't hurt

(06-02-2025, 06:41 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Read most (if not all) threads in the Analysis of the text forum and Marginalia, even the old ones

Read those that you find interesting/relevant 

I mean, on the whole, yes. It's just that sometimes I've come across threads that dont catch my eye at first glance, but then when I delve into the comments (specially when they digress), they casually drift into fruitful exchanges about topics that do interest me.

There's lots to go off in the replies.
Personally I would watch Koens Videos, then read about Lisa's "many scribes" then tackle Rene's website with my knowledge I gained.

I would however also advise against avoiding "nonsense" entirely.
My favourite parts of Voynich research, and the ones I think about the most are regarding John Dee and Edward Kelley.
From a purely educational and entertainment value, these pair stole the show. S+ in all departments.
The VM is at least seems to be on the weird side of things..

So, weird is worth some time investment.. after you establish a foundation.

You should be also open to the idea that Voynich Manuscript is gibberish and nonsense, a collection of pseudowords that don't translate to any real words and don't make any coherent sentences.

Actually it seems quite possible at the moment. I would say it about 50% of chance or even more. It would explain a lot of weird features of the script. Of course  it raises some problems of its own so it's not universally accepted at the moment but just considered possible.

I guess most of us here would "wish" that it has some meaning. It would be kind of tragic if it turned out that people were struggling
for over 100 years to make some sense of something that actually doesn't have any sense.

But your wishes shouldn't fog your brain. So always try to find the truth and not to prove your theory 

It is perhaps not all that bad.

I agree that it is possible that there is no meaning.
However, it was undoubtedly generated using some kind of a system / set of rules.

The general approach can therefore remain the same: to figure out more precisely what these rules are.
Once they are known in sufficient detail, it should be easier to decide whether there is a meaning behind it all or not.

The attempts to find word models of all nature are one component, but the work of P.Feaster, which indicates that there seem to be patterns that are not local, is another.

I have read for many years now, that the first step in decoding a cipher should be to try to identify the language. For the Voynich MS I do not agree with that.
We are too far away from understanding the basic system, in order to find the language.
Right now, all languages are equally wrong.

(07-02-2025, 06:49 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It would be kind of tragic if it turned out that people were struggling for over 100 years to make some sense of something that actually doesn't have any sense.

Not necessarily tragic. To me it would be pretty cool to learn about a process that is both very simple (to allow 15th century scribes to employ it) and produces very complex text-like artifacts. Recall that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., they are unable to generate passable random numbers or phrases or passwords. It should be insightful to learn how exactly VM was created.