The Voynich Ninja

Quite often, I see opinions here discussing various theories and judging them based on the amount of effort that would have been required from the VMS author for them to be true. I want to discuss that, even though it's almost definitely been discussed before. 

How much effort do you think could have been put into the VMS text, illustrations and/or ciphers?
How much effort from the author does a theory require before you dismiss it as unlikely, and why? 
How much effort would a potential decoding require before you dismiss the cipher as unlikely, and why?



I'll start: I think that any amount of effort/monotony, up to the scale of decades of work, sits within what's possible. There are countless examples of people doing extensive monotonous work for no specific reason beyond "why not?". Some people simply want to do something and do it, regardless of utility. 

You have communities and individuals everywhere that do things on this scale. Some people go out and collect rocks from different places, some people spend years organising and digitising manuscripts knowing that almost noone will ever look, others build an extensive library of all of the worlds road bollards, electrical posts, and plant species for no reason other than knowing where they are on geoguessr. A group of players in minecraft are attempting to build the entire earth at a 1:1 scale! 

Perhaps the most relevant example is the Voynich community itself. Many people set out to research and solve this manuscript, spending hours, days, weeks, months, sometimes years, and sometimes decades putting in 1000s of hours of effort in. Is it so unbelievable that someone may spend an entire year's worth of their free time writing a book meant to be unreadable, just for the sake of it? We tend to assume that if there is meaning in the text then there must have been a use case, but what if the author simply enjoyed writing weird/fancy books?

(04-06-2026, 03:57 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps the most relevant example is the Voynich community itself. Many people set out to research and solve this manuscript, spending hours, days, weeks, months, sometimes years, and sometimes decades putting in 1000s of hours of effort in. Is it so unbelievable that someone may spend an entire year's worth of their free time writing a book meant to be unreadable, just for the sake of it? We tend to assume that if there is meaning in the text then there must have been a use case, but what if the author simply enjoyed writing weird/fancy books?

I see no real hard limit. If we use as the benchmark some modern hobbyists, then even spending 30 years on something like this is not off the table.

As for the deciphering/decoding effort, it took some 500 years to decode book III of Trithemius Steganographia. So no hard limit either on how hard the book should be for the potential decoder. And, as far as I understand, Steganographia had no purpose other than to showcase the cipher.

(04-06-2026, 03:57 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps the most relevant example is the Voynich community itself. Many people set out to research and solve this manuscript, spending hours, days, weeks, months, sometimes years, and sometimes decades putting in 1000s of hours of effort in. Is it so unbelievable that someone may spend an entire year's worth of their free time writing a book meant to be unreadable, just for the sake of it? We tend to assume that if there is meaning in the text then there must have been a use case, but what if the author simply enjoyed writing weird/fancy books?

The problem is probably more that the VMS, at over 200 pages, is so complex and consistent that a rather elaborate generator would have had to be created for it—assuming no language was being encrypted. A language, on the other hand, inherently possesses this consistent complexity. In that respect, only a relatively simple cipher would be necessary.

It is not so much the effort of writing itself, but rather the effort of creating such a complex generator to encrypt “nonsense” that is highly anachronistic.

(04-06-2026, 03:57 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.How much effort do you think could have been put into the VMS text, illustrations and/or ciphers?

There are two separate questions here: (1) how long did it take the Author to create the contents -- that is, to compose the text and conceive the drawings, and (2) how long did it take to write that contents down onto the vellum sheets that are now at Beinecke.

As for (2), I am convinced that the text and the outlines of the drawings on each page were done at the same time by a Scribe distinct from the Author, who merely copied the text from a draft provided by the Author, and drew the figures according to his instructions (which may have been just "draw a different random plant on each page"), filling in the details with "inspiration" from other books.

Thus I estimate that the Scribe would take about one hour -- maybe half of that, maybe twice as much -- to do each page.

As for (1), if the contents was original research or elucubrations (which I don't think was the case), it could have taken decades.  Whereas, if the Author was merely translating or transcribing a bunch of lost texts, it would have taken less than one hour per page, too.

Quote:How much effort from the author does a theory require before you dismiss it as unlikely, and why?

The question should be whether the proposed "solution" requires substantially more effort than other methods that the Author could have used to achieve the intended result.   

Thus, in, particular, I don't care about any of the "gibberish generation methods" that have been proposed -- because they would all require a lot more more effort than, say, copying every third word of the Summa Theologica, kcab ot tnorf htiw a elpmis noitutitsbus rehpic -- and yet they would generate a gibberish text that would be much less suitable for the alleged purposes of that exercise.

And likewise I never cared about research that assumes a complicated cipher that not even the NSA and Bletchley spooks could crack.  What would be the point?  If the Author was terrified by the possibility of certain parties reading the contents, he should not have filled the book with puzzling diagrams and exotic scenery. In fact, he should not have written the book at all...

Quote:How much effort would a potential decoding require before you dismiss the cipher as unlikely, and why?

Anything above zero.  That is, I don't believe that the contents is encrypted.

All the best, --stolfi

I wonder though: is the idea of a medieval "hobbyist" spending an unlimited amount of time and effort on a passion project really feasible without religious fervor? Any pre-renaissance examples that we know of? 

As a definition of "hobby", let's say anything they're not being compensated for and that's not related to their basic needs. (Farming is not a hobby, nor is making clothes, nor is being employed in the construction of a castle).

(04-06-2026, 04:42 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And likewise I never cared about research that assumes a complicated cipher that not even the NSA and Bletchley spooks could crack.  What would be the point?  If the Author was terrified by the possibility of certain parties reading the contents, he should not have filled the book with puzzling diagrams and exotic scenery. In fact, he should not have written the book at all...

This gets to the very heart of why I asked the question. There are many presumptions within this answer, namely that there must have been a purpose, and that whoever wrote it must have been terrified of the contents being read. Who says there has to be a point? As I said, people do very difficult things with no point to them all of the time.

Imagine an artist with a private sketchbook, within which they spend a long time creating detailed sketches for no reason other than to practice or for enjoyment. Perhaps in that case the reverse question is more relevant: Why would they spend their time quickly scribbling low quality easy drawings, instead of practising more difficult detailed sketches? 

Obviously in the case of the VMS it would be a cipher enthusiast instead, but hopefully what I mean is clear..

The reasons are more scrutable, but there are some genuinely absurd feats of repetition in the early modern period. Creating log tables by hand and some of the work that went into astronomical tables. My recollection of the details is hazy, but calculating pi by hand before Newton was attempted by many people and required a tremendous amount of time to push to greater precision, yet people did it. Reflecting a personal interest, these are all math related, and slightly later than the VMS, but it goes to show how willing people are to do a repetitive task for fairly abstract ends. I'm pretty dour on the idea that the VMS was algorithmically created, not because people were unwilling to put the time and effort into algorithms, but because there are easier ways to get a meaningless text that has the VMS's features

(04-06-2026, 05:37 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wonder though: is the idea of a medieval "hobbyist" spending an unlimited amount of time and effort on a passion project really feasible without religious fervor? Any pre-renaissance examples that we know of?

If Igor the peasant farmer worked from dawn till dusk then in an hour of evening firelight whilst his wife cooked dinner,
Igor whittled wooden caricatures of local personalities, he did this most nights from his twenties till his fifties[1],
say 5hrs per week for 30yrs thats 7,800 hours of 'hobbyism'.
If it took 20 hrs to make a complete figure that 390 figures that Igor created in his lifetime.
As soon as Igors collection is broken up then very little evidence remains that show these sculptures were the lifetimes work of one man.

The Villa of the Papryi is some rich persons collection of statues and scrolls, how much time and money were invested into creating that collection we will never know,
but if it were not for a volcano, we would never know that that person collected anything at all.

TL;DR Hobbies dont leave much evidence.

[1]https://historymedieval.com/medieval-england-lifespans-how-long-did-people-really-live/
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri

(04-06-2026, 06:58 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.TL;DR Hobbies dont leave much evidence.

Which means that we can only speculate. And perhaps a literary hobby might have slightly better odds of leaving evidence? I struggle to think of instances where someone made a book that wasn't either for profit (i.e. professionally), for practical reasons or for religious reasons. 

Regarding the early modern period: what innovation has had a greater impact on European literary culture than the printing press? We can't just take early modern literary practices and assume that those would also have existed before.

(04-06-2026, 08:45 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I struggle to think of instances where someone made a book that wasn't either for profit (i.e. professionally), for practical reasons or for religious reasons.

Here are 2,

Charles  Dellschau ( 1830 – 1923 )
was a Prussian-American who gained posthumous fame after the discovery of his large scrapbooks that contained drawings, collages and watercolors of airplanes and airships.
.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dellschau

Henry Joseph Darger Jr. ( 1892 – 1973 )
was an American janitor and hospital worker who became known after his death for his immense body of art and literature.
.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger

I am not trying to be contrary , it just looks that way 
 but  yes, it does seem to be a rare phenomena.