The Voynich Ninja

(11-07-2026, 11:42 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-07-2026, 10:54 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One cannot dismiss that as coincidence, even if one carefully avoid looking at the numbers.

One absolutely can.

Sorry.  Of course one always "can". 

Suppose for a moment that the SPS is indeed a mostly word-for-word phonetic transcription of the SBJ in some still unidentified language and notation, with all the inconsistencies that one must expect from that process.  What would be evidence that you would find convincing?

All the best, --stolfi

Not exactly my turf and not exactly Chinese either, but resting in the same geographic area, anyone considered Hangul as a possibility?
The Hangul writing system assembles letters into syllable blocks with an initial slot, a medial vowel slot, an optional final slot, so text is a linear sequence of internally slotted blocks, which structurally is, in my modest understanding, what Voynichese slot grammar does, at least in principle.

Excluding many dissimilarities: Hangul and Voynichese use the same type of mechanical blueprint to build their tokens. Hangul uses that blueprint to map the infinite variations of human speech, while the Voynich system uses it to heavily lock down and restrict its underlying code. 
Mechanically opposite objective functions while the blueprint is same and thus purpose-neutra

But as said initially, not really my gaming area.

-Noctula

Full meaningful phrases from a number of recipes would be more convincing than just daiin and chedy coincidentally being closely aligned without having to stretch dar, dair into it.

In my mind, if it was based on an Asian language, even if the author was being dictated to, there would be some Asian influence to his writing like a consistent stroke order that resulted in readily recognizable and distinct glyphs or words. Ie. I think there is a clear difference between r and n.

None of us can truly claim to be on the right track if we’re proposing a solution until we can consistently show a set of simple rules that result in a clear set of phrases, sentences and paragraphs.

(12-07-2026, 01:07 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That explanation stops being plausible as soon as you try to flesh it out.

Why is there no visible connection anywhere with European medicine of the time?  Why would he encrypt all the text with such a complicated method that not even the NSA spooks could make a dent at it?  If the book was for his own use, why would he draw all the nymphs? If he was a medical doctor, what precious secret knowledge might he have about the stars and the Zodiac? If it was about which remedies or organs were associated with the planets, why isn't there a single detail that suggests these connections anywhere in the book -- no astronomical references in Herbal or Bio, no herbal or medical references in Astro/Cosmo/Zodiac?

Well we don't know what the text says. The very first sentence of the VMS may be "This is the book of secret european medicine and how it should be carried out, but shh, don't tell anyone else". 

The presence of a herbal section and/or an astrology/zodiac section is also extremely consistent with books on european medicine from the time. They typically contained things like bloodletting rules, monthly regimens etc. And yes, those sections would often not be obviously linked to one another though imagery. Often, there was just a bunch of text explaining "the diagrams later in this section say this, or can be used to do this". And again, there may be constant references in the text, but we can't read the text!

Furthermore, manuscripts of the time were commonly composed of seperately made sections bound together, which could also explain a lack of cross referencing. The person who bound the works, perhaps later, may have bound these works together simply because of the shared script, and then seperated the sections based on the imagery.

In my opinion, the VMS is only 1 or 2 important missing pages away from obviously containing a work on european medicine. And those missing pages -perhaps a bloodletting man or zodiac man- would be at the end of the zodiac section, precisely where there are missing folios.

(12-07-2026, 11:43 AM)Grove Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Full meaningful phrases from a number of recipes would be more convincing than just daiin and chedy coincidentally being closely aligned without having to stretch dar, dair into it.

Well, I have full translations of several paragraphs (including f105v.32) into Chinese characters. And also the translation of the whole section (including the four missing pages!), except that the paragraphs are scrambled in some still unspecified order.

Quote:In my mind, if it was based on an Asian language, even if the author was being dictated to, there would be some Asian influence to his writing like a consistent stroke order that resulted in readily recognizable and distinct glyphs or words.

Sorry, I don't understand this objection. In the proposed scenario, the Author was not Chinese, and resorted to the dictation + phonetic notation solution precisely because he did not understand the Chinese script.  In his phonetic alphabet (or shorthand system) he clearly chose glyphs that would be easy to write: mostly with 1 or 2 short strokes, rarely 3, adequate for writing with a quill rather than a brush. 

And the glyphs we see in the VMS are not his handwriting, but of the Scribe who put his draft to vellum.  And the Scribe was definitely European, drawing "inspiration" from other European manuscripts that could be found in an European library.

Quote:Ie. I think there is a clear difference between r and n.

The proposed confusion is not between r and n, but between r and in.  Like the easy confusion of European scribes between "m" and "in" or "ni" (which is the reason with the "i" got its dot), not between "m" and "n". 

The glyphs n and r surely were distinct in the Author's mind, and in fact the alphabet seems more logical if r was not allowed in the "coda" part of the words.  The confusion would have been only in the Scribe's mind when reading the Author's draft.

Quote:None of us can truly claim to be on the right track if we’re proposing a solution until we can consistently show a set of simple rules that result in a clear set of phrases, sentences and paragraphs.

That is what one expects that the solution to a cryptographic puzzle will look like.  But this is not an unknown cipher, it is an unknown language.  With a complicated and inconsistent script, with many errors.  In these cases, even when if one happens to have the plaintext, building a dictionary will be a slow process, perhaps never completely finished. 

All the best, --stolfi

Orthographies have clear rules for representing language, though. Like, I recognize the distinction you are drawing, but if this is an orthographic representation of a language---if Voynichese is an alphabet representing words---you've embedded in that claim the claim that we should be able to describe "proper writing". 

This should be especially true if the alphabet were made to purpose because there is no reason for historical spellings and various adaptation compromises that usually complicate this. The hypothesis of a made-to-purpose script would cut very hard against a complicated, inconsistent script, all else equal.

But even accepting the possibility that The Author, for whatever reason, made a complicated script from scratch, the fact that you have been unable to penetrate it is a problem for your theory, not for your critics. Assuming that it will be difficult to prove your theory might well explain why you have not proved it, but the thing you are explaining is that lack of convincing proof, at least in that domain!

(12-07-2026, 03:28 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But even accepting the possibility that The Author, for whatever reason, made a complicated script from scratch, the fact that you have been unable to penetrate it is a problem for your theory, not for your critics

Perhaps the author was not a professional in the field of writing, or perhaps he found his writing system convenient for himself but did not consider others.
There are examples in history of inconvenient scripts (Danielian script; sorry to mention for the hundredth time) and scripts that are difficult for foreigners to read but easy for a native speaker (like Egyptian hieroglyphs, which do not convey vowels in writing. As foreigners, it is now impossible for us to determine what the vowels in Egyptian were).
In my opinion, "inconvenience" can accompany writing, and this should not be dismissed immediately. It is possible that the author created You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that we are currently unable to decipher, no matter how many medieval Chinese texts we have.

(12-07-2026, 01:22 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well we don't know what the text says. The very first sentence of the VMS may be "This is the book of secret european medicine and how it should be carried out, but shh, don't tell anyone else".

But the point is, how plausible it is that someone would write such a book?  Try to imagine that doctor and his frame of mind.  Who would be the intended reader(s)?  Would they be anyone else besides himself?  Whoever they were, think of what would have been his natural decisions in light of that answer: vellum or paper, hard or light encryption; with pertinent images, with intentionally misleading images, or without images; with all that blank vellum or packed solid (like most "technical" manuscripts); encryped in full, or only on the most sensitive parts; ...

Why would he have felt the need to invent such a complicated encryption method?   Why would he invent a new script from scratch, unlike any other script?  The use of original glyphs, instead of Latin or Greek letters, did not make the encryption more secure. 

Quote:The presence of a herbal section and/or an astrology/zodiac section is also extremely consistent with books on european medicine from the time. They typically contained things like bloodletting rules, monthly regimens etc.

Indeed medieval medicine was often connected to astrology. (Culpeper's herbal is big on that connection too.)  But the connection was usually scattered throughout the medical text, where each plant was associated to a planet, etc. 

But that is not at all the case of the VMS.  We cannot read the text, allright; but what about the figures?

There is not a single star, Moon, Sun, or Zodiac icon in the whole Herbal  and Pharma sections.  There is not a single herb, disease, medicine, or medical procedure depicted in the Astro, Cosmo, and Zodiac sections (unless you count the bush of Aries and the hay of Taurus).  Those sections are not even in the same quires...

Quote:Furthermore, manuscripts of the time were commonly composed of separately made sections bound together, which could also explain a lack of cross referencing. The person who bound the works, perhaps later, may have bound these works together simply because of the shared script, and then separated the sections based on the imagery.

I happen to agree that the sections are independent books -- in fact, written by different authors in different times and places -- that the Author merely transcribed/translated/transcoded/whatever into the same language and his invented script. 

But "independent books" only makes the "encrypted secret knowledge" theory less plausible.  Because it then calls for a polymath Author who would have valuable secret knowledge about herbs and anatomy (or public bath plumbing) and astronomy and astrology, and decided to write that knowledge on separate books -- completely encrypted, but filled with attention-grabbing figures...

Quote:In my opinion, the VMS is only 1 or 2 important missing pages away from obviously containing a work on European medicine. And those missing pages -perhaps a bloodletting man or zodiac man- would be at the end of the zodiac section, precisely where there are missing folios.

Maybe, but the fact is that there are no such pages. Thus no evidence at all that the Herbal+Bio sections have any connection to the Astro+Cosmo+Zodiac sections.

All the best, --stolfi

(12-07-2026, 04:33 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps the author was not a professional in the field of writing, or perhaps he found his writing system convenient for himself but did not consider others.

Perhaps, but the challenge for the theorist is still to describe the object of the theory, and that very much includes the writing of the VMS, especially since so much hinges on assuming it to be a way around reading Chinese characters

(12-07-2026, 05:37 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(12-07-2026, 04:33 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps the author was not a professional in the field of writing, or perhaps he found his writing system convenient for himself but did not consider others.

Perhaps, but the challenge for the theorist is still to describe the object of the theory, and that very much includes the writing of the VMS, especially since so much hinges on assuming it to be a way around reading Chinese characters

That's true...
It would be possible to try to create something similar for Chinese characters. Not necessarily a parody of Voynichese, but following the same principle.