The Voynich Ninja

Full Version: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
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(22-07-2026, 08:08 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What are the differences? How different is the text with nulls?

I'm talking about the version with nulls. Just looks very odd. As I said, it's my subjective feeling vs yours.

(22-07-2026, 08:08 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So first we need to define the "similarity" criterion...

Subjective similarity can be tested without defining it specifically. The easiest would be get one piece of Voynichese produced by the script and 3 pieces of the same length from Currier A and see how easy it is for another person to identify the generated piece without the reference text. If it's easy, then the generated text is not similar to the actual Voynichese. However, this is only a bad proxy for proper statistical testing, which requires the creation of a large ciphertext.

My point here is that when someone claims that some method produces a very good replica of Voynichese, this is based on their subjective assessment which may or may not be justified.
(22-07-2026, 09:16 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My point here is that when someone claims that some method produces a very good replica of Voynichese, this is based on their subjective assessment which may or may not be justified.
You're right
(22-07-2026, 09:16 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm talking about the version with nulls. Just looks very odd.
It is possible that there are not enough nulls at the moment, and they do not have any special rules for placement in the text (except for next to eor and or).
I was just thinking about it...
(23-07-2026, 07:39 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is possible that there are not enough nulls at the moment, and they do not have any special rules for placement in the text (except for next to eor and or).
I was just thinking about it...

I think it's likely there are no nulls in the Voynich MS. If the set of glyphs was made from meaningful and null glyphs there likely will be obvious statistical differences between the two sets. As far as I know, no statistical test shows a clear separation of popular glyphs into two groups with different characteristics.
(23-07-2026, 08:58 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(23-07-2026, 07:39 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is possible that there are not enough nulls at the moment, and they do not have any special rules for placement in the text (except for next to eor and or).
I was just thinking about it...

I think it's likely there are no nulls in the Voynich MS. If the set of glyphs was made from meaningful and null glyphs there likely will be obvious statistical differences between the two sets. As far as I know, no statistical test shows a clear separation of popular glyphs into two groups with different characteristics.
No one knows for sure.
There's something similar to nulls, like the same repeated ch. And either the author was very good at "gluing" them into the text, or he used existing characters from his alphabet as nulls.
Anyway, it makes sense for Voynichese to add these nulls. For example, f2v:
kooiin cheopchor otaiin odain chor dair shty
kchokchy sho shol qotcho loeees qoty chor daiin

From the perspective of my cipher, the first line is generally correct, starting with oiin (XVIII) and ending with a unit (y). The author may have assumed that if we looked at the unedited encrypted text, we would be able to see that the letters and words were arranged in a sequence, and we would be able to figure out the meaning of the sequence and decipher his great works. The introduction of such nulls (which are actually extra letters) allows you to mask words and blur the sequence (which you can see in my examples - the ch nulls give themselves away because they are not where they should be). 
I think that such meticulousness may be possible, given that we can't even decipher drawings, let alone text.
However, it is currently unknown whether Voynichese actually contains nulls, which are completely meaningless combinations (such as yt in my cipher, where y represents a unit at the beginning and t represents nothing). 
At the moment, it is possible to see extra letters that are nulls in the encrypted text.
Let's take one of my examples. Instead of deciphering it, let's simply remove the nulls.

cha /// char cheor oiin dan chor chor a /// chor chor choiin o daiin daiin ydan


1). char - the combination ar does not make sense, so we remove it, leaving ch.
2). chor chor - the combination goes after dan - XII. XXIX can't go after XII. Remove ch.
3). choiin - The combination choiin doesn't make sense because it's the number XXXVIII. We don't have a 38th letter. However, the combination oiin makes sense, so we keep it.
4). ydan - the unit y can't stand in this case.
5). cha - this is XXV, i.e. the letter Z. We understand that the letter Z can't stand between the sentences. We separate cha into ch a, resulting in T E, which is the word et.

It's easier than solving anagrams (especially for me Confused ). However, if you encounter difficulties, you can simply ignore the problematic word and guess it from the context.
By comparing with my cipher, we can try to "calculate" the boundaries between the words of the original text. Let's take f15v:

poror orshy / choiin dtchan / opchordy / schor or oro raiin cthy / *ain dar cthor daiin / qokor okeor okaiin / doiin choky shol qoky / qotchod otchor chor chor ytchor cthy / s qotchey choty kaiin / otchy raiin coy / choiir sho * chy s chy tor ...

I used units (i, in, iin, y) and "smallest" numbers (such as or) to distinguish between words. The words in Voynichese are more diverse here than in my cipher examples, but there are some similarities: qokor okeor okaiin and doiin choky shol qoky.
A good example is f2r:
okol chy chor cthor yor an chan saiin chety chyky sal
In addition to possible nulls, there is a certain order in this string: ol - ch - or - an
Perhaps if you try to identify such repeating elements in the text, you can create a list of encrypted numbers and check which ones form numbers and which ones do not.
I'm thinking of doing it soon...
After working with the text of pages You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f3r, I got the following impression:
1). It's possible that two ciphers were used to encrypt the book - one based on simple substitution and similar to my cipher, and the other might have been related to the wheel method, something like this:
[attachment=16880]
Instead of Arabic numerals, there were Roman numerals, which were later replaced with Voynichese letters.  This impression was based on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. text. I noticed that the beginning of lines 8,9 and 12,13 contains a small number (dain and daiin). Except for line 7, all previous lines already end with a smaller number. 
I was also confused by the sequence: okar oky daiin okchey kokaiin okchol kodchy (f1r.22). Ko cases are quite strange. Perhaps this is a consequence of this.
This could also explain some of the variability of the words. In my examples, the degree of "uniformity" of the words is high. It could also explain the role of the gallows in the cases of sheopchol and shokcheey. Perhaps this is a hint of "turns" or something like that.
But it could be simpler: the numbers on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are just not aligned very well. There are still some "decreases" there: ykal ar ytaiin (f1r.1); darain dain (f1r.16). Maybe the author didn't do well at first Smile
2). On f3r, it's most likely a substitution similar to my cipher. There are clear alignments (for example, chor cthom otaldal). cTh, o, and other combinations from my cipher are often seen. Apparently, the algorithm is similar. But I don't know how to choose the right numbers...
In the substitution option, the letter s can be replaced with a space between the words (qokol chololy s cham cthol).
3). It seems to me that the degree of nulls in the text is not as high as I thought. This means that words are numbers in their entirety, and daiin differs from qodaiin in the same way that 5 differs from 15.
4). The possible specificity of the cipher is the ability to write the same number in different ways. Like an and dy in my cipher.

And that's all I've managed to find out so far...
The more complicated it gets the less likely it looks.
(29-07-2026, 09:45 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The more complicated it gets the less likely it looks.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you...
But in reality, the problem may not be in the theory, but in me. Perhaps my amateur mind is not seeing something obvious.
At the moment, my cipher is still a significant detail. And I'm probably not very good at working with text...
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