The Voynich Ninja

(19-06-2026, 06:29 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.then how can you claim that you have decrypted something, until you have shown that there are no other fuction(s) which produce meaningful text(s), or you have found all of them (and shown that none other exists)?

It's impossible to prove that a message has no alternative meaning. Easiest example: suppose yesterday we secretly agreed that the phrase "It's impossible to prove that a message has no alternative meaning." would be a code to mean "Let's go to the pub". Now the beginning of this paragraph has a completely different meaning just between you and me.

Having said that, if a deterministic decryption process produces a sensible plaintext without sacrificing too much information, I'd call this a successful decryption. For example, if someone demonstrated how 1000 symbols of sensible plaintext can be decoded from 3000 symbols of Voynichese, using a process that can itself be encoded in much fewer than 1000 symbols, I'd call this a success. On the other hand, I would be suspicious if 3000 symbols of Voynichese yielded only 100 symbols of plaintext.

(19-06-2026, 06:29 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(14-06-2026, 09:07 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Most diplomatic ciphers worked this way with letter variants. And homophonic polyphonic ciphers also allow multiple decryptions, with the right one only clear from the context.

Clearly your example doesn't fall under my definition of encryption (to which symbol is mapped symbol 'S'?). Nor is it possible to decrypt it uniquely (without knowing the function used or the original text): "A MNEON" - is it "AN OMEN"? "A GENRE"? "A FENCE"? "A COMBO"?

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean, probably this is a misquote? I was talking about polyphonic homophonic (thanks, @nablator!) ciphers there. A simple example of a polyphonic homophonic cipher: assume each letter of the alphabet is encoded by the next letter of the alphabet (so, A is encoded as B, K as L, etc) and in addition digits encode the following letters 0=A 1=E 2=I 3=U 4=O 5=S 6=A 7=O 8=E 9=I

2 MJL8 D47LJ15 uniquely decodes to I LIKE COOKIES without any problems. Actually any ciphertext under this scheme will decode to a unique plaintext.

If you were talking about the permutation cipher, it's very easy to decode:

IIEOKESIOCKL => reading one letter at a time form the beginning and from the end: I L I K E C O O K I E S

(19-06-2026, 06:29 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've noticed that scrambles have a funny property: if you apply the same rule to the same text several times, you'll end up with the original message ... Which means that, again, those can be solved by considering all permutations (why this is important look in the 2nd message)

The number of permutations even for a short text of 100 characters is prohibitively large to enumerate directly. What is more, it's likely there will be many sensible decodings.

(19-06-2026, 06:29 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I meant a bit different thing: consider a graph (oriented tree) whose vertices are all symbols of your original message and edges reflect the order of those symbols. Any encryption (disclaimer: I could come up with) doesn't change this graph. See?

No, I don't, sorry. What do the edges connect in this scenario?

(19-06-2026, 06:56 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A simple example of a polyphonic cipher: assume each letter of the alphabet is encoded by the next letter of the alphabet (so, A is encoded as B, K as L, etc) and in addition digits encode the following letters 0=A 1=E 2=I 3=U 4=O 5=S 6=A 7=O 8=E 9=I

This one is homophonic.

(19-06-2026, 11:10 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This one is homophonic.

This is why I prefer show and tell 

I wonder if there is some working mnemonic for these.

(19-06-2026, 06:29 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Some other things (in no particular order) that I've noticed while skimming through:
- "oMae" is present in the "alphabetical circle" 115:1006187, which probably were used as a tool for encryption or decryption; it might mean a single letter/digit.
- Pages from 128:1006200 up to 135:1006207 are clearly referencing zodiacs.
- 133:1006205 has the word "octebra" in the middle of the picture, a Libra month is "october" and there is a Libra symbol in the middle. Same thing with 135:1006207, in the middle there is something like "dembre" - Sagittarius month "december". Aren't those enough to figure out the language/country?
- 128:1006200 Pisces contain 2 words, one is "mane" (likely "march"), and the other encrypted/voynichese. Those might be the same or reference another Pisces month.
- 122:1006194 8-sided star has 8 words associated with it. Star is alchemical symbol(?). Historians, what could be the words?
- 126:1006198 6-sided star has 6 (7?) symbols associated with it, if we assume that it's alchemical hexagon, then we can get meaning for those 6 symbols
- 127:1006199 has the same star, but now with words, which migh have the same meaning as the symbols from above.
- 136:1006208 and onwards contain alchemical recipes(?). Note that as with the plants, first were drawn pictures, then written text (I make this conclusion from the "curvature" of the text)
- 148:1006220 is written as if there is a picture on the right, but the space is empty. 198:1006268 same thing. Explanation?
- 162:1037112 and onwards is a short summary/quick reference or table of contents, but since pages weren't originally enumerated, we can rule out the latter. Those also could provide some meaning to symbols/words.
- Those should be either at the beginning or end of the manuscript, suggesting that it was disassembled (before the pages were enumerated)
- 193:1006263 and 194:1006264 have different font size, it gets smaller, likely to keep the text on a single page. Possible reason to why the text can't be split on different pages?
- 29:1006101/143:1006215 look at the first symbol. The writer (scribble?) is counting something; 85:1006157 he draws a curve and then proceeds to count the loops; 99:1006171 contains arab numerals, enumerated are the 6-sided star symbols from 126:1006198 (or not?), then they repeat in cycles - this might've been one of the very first pages written, containing the encryption rule, another one being 120:1006192. Both are possibly connected to the "alphabetical circle" 115:1006187.
- 118:1006190 is the shortest page. Can be bruteforced for any possible mapping (only 14 symbols).

So, no one is going to comment on this?

(21-06-2026, 06:15 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So, no one is going to comment on this?

I'm sorry, but these appear to be an equivalent of coming to a basketball game and saying "Have you noticed that every time the ball goes through a hoop the score is updated?"

For example:

(19-06-2026, 06:29 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- 133:1006205 has the word "octebra" in the middle of the picture, a Libra month is "october" and there is a Libra symbol in the middle. Same thing with 135:1006207, in the middle there is something like "dembre" - Sagittarius month "december". Aren't those enough to figure out the language/country?

There is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on this forum that has been updated regularly for over a year now, dedicated specifically to creating a map of locations for these month labels. The question itself, whether these labels can tell something about the place where they were created, I think already appears in D'Imperio's book from 1978.

You named your posting here "some suggestions and theories",
but your last text block was in total a line of observations, some questions about those and a final one:

(21-06-2026, 06:15 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]
- 133:1006205 has the word "octebra" in the middle of the picture, a Libra month is "october" and there is a Libra symbol in the middle. Same thing with 135:1006207, in the middle there is something like "dembre" - Sagittarius month "december". Aren't those enough to figure out the language/country?
[..]
So, no one is going to comment on this?

For the "months' names": no, it is obviously not enough to figure out language/country (of those "months" words only!)

I came with this some few times now: 
is asking and caring for the "months' names the relevant question here?

If we see(!) and then consider what we get: no.

We see several months (in many understandings, even the wrong ones...) scribbled across the zodiacs' badges in some cursive/kurrent* writing, which is used nearly nowhere else -- surely not in VMS main texts, labels and comments.
This type of writing was also not much en vogue in the first half of 15th Ct.
You can understand these words as "octe-bre", "noue-bre" and even "decebre" here, that can be recognized, but it doesn't really matter.

Most researchers take here something for granted that was not deeply discussed:
the "zodiac" sequence is the only major element of VMS that we all immediately can recognize -- and not only we today, but even medieval Europeans, Chinese, Arab or some Maya/Aztec, who had a similar concept of zodiacs on their own, but at 1440 of course no imagination of Europe (and Europe not of South America). Nearly all people of this world (apart from Subsahara) would have been able to recognize such symbols as some kind of zodiacs.

The question is: why on earth would the author or some scribe of VMS explain to us the only part that we can know, while he is explaining nothing else of the unknown parts in any understandable writing?

Too kind of him -- a guy that never seems to be kind.

Was it really kindness to give us some hints, or are the months's names just graffiti add-ons by some jerk who wasn't sure about it 200 years later and gave himself some (not-even-quite-accurate) help with such unnecessary notes?

As some people here know, I am strongly tending to this second understanding; some "belief" into the kindness of that author does not help at all, and the hunt for origin and language of those names will be useless, apart from maybe knowing some day where this late commentator came from and what he spoke...

So what are the relevant observations and questions within the zodiac sequence...?


(* for German readers. We have a different understanding of "cursive")

(19-06-2026, 06:37 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(12-06-2026, 09:11 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I know that the plants described Gheuens and Rapaport, and identified by O'Neil (at least, this is stated on voynich.nu).

Did they find a rule for plant exageration? Could they be encrypted/scrambled too?

Oh, I forgot to answer. Their conclusions were questionable. For example, they identified the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a eryngium... I do not know on what basis or on what similarity. You can read about this in the MS Browser on voynich.nu

P.S. Sorry. As a eryngium

(22-06-2026, 12:13 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The question is: why on earth would the author or some scribe of VMS explain to us the only part that we can know, while he is explaining nothing else of the unknown parts in any understandable writing?

Too kind of him -- a guy that never seems to be kind.

Was it really kindness to give us some hints, or are the months's names just graffiti add-ons by some jerk who wasn't sure about it 200 years later and gave himself some (not-even-quite-accurate) help with such unnecessary notes?

>add-ons by some jerk
Well, first of all, you can see the same "jerk" circling over the pictures (and text in other places) - it seems more like an attempt to preserve the book contents (from fading out). And since this is the only place he "comments" on, I see no reason to assume that it is an extra addition, rather than a part of the original text.

As for the zodiacs, that is just something you expect to see on your crazy esoteric bullshit bingo card.

>why on earth would the author or some scribe of VMS explain to us the only part that we can know
You know they are zodiacs, he knows that you know that they are zodiacs. What's the point of encrypting them if someone will be able to recognize them from the pictures?

And speaking of zodiacs. Those are clearly star names on those pictures, yet simple counting shows that those are not the stars in respective constellations. Has anyone tried to match them to the names of surrounding stars? Check for common names? And more generally: is there a digitized version of the manuscript which replaces letters/words with digits/id's? Idk about you, but for my eyes it's painful to scan the text. Sure it would be nice to just be able to run an algorithm which points out all the occurrences of the word "oMae", for example.

(10-07-2026, 03:39 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Their conclusions were questionable. For example, they identified the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a eryngium... 

Well, is there a better candidate?