The Voynich Ninja

Full Version: f116v is a decryption attempt?
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(13-07-2026, 07:29 PM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(13-07-2026, 12:26 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In particular, on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. line 28

Interesting. Could line 28 be about taking goat's milk?
Not necessarily. Most likely the deciphering is wrong. It is possible that oladabad and miltod were an attempt to translate qokaiin qotaiin d, but the author felt that oladabad was the wrong word.
"so nim gas mich" is the only thing the author got out of this recipe. He may have just given up on deciphering it when he realized it was wrong.
It would be interesting to study the principle of its decryption...
@Jorge_Stolfi I remembered your guess that ar is a misspelling of ain. If we imagine that cphaiin daiin ain (instead of ar), it becomes more like "marix morix vix".
At the moment, I think I can fully compare the text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f104r.28

anchiton oladabad miltod tc cetr ceve portad m
six marix morix vix ahta ma ria
arorsheey paldcn ubreƞ so nim gas mich

pchedar qokaiin qotaiin dl ral cheodl cphaiin daiin ar
qekeeey qoparaiin olcheear chedar or

arorsheey olkeechy or
char cheeol s or or aiin otam

(enlarged to make the colored text easier to read)
1). The parts of the words oladabad and portad correspond to the Voynich glyphs iin d. So, iin, in, or n can be the letter a!

2).
 In my opinion, the spell about Maria is not consistent. At first, the author mistakenly wrote the letter m, which may correspond to ar (by the way, the word anchiton may be the same as michiton, given this coincidence. The word pchedar also contains ar). Secondly, I have problems with establishing the correspondence of parts of words, but it seems to exist: the digram ar and m occur 3 times, respectively (not counting the upper ar). The letter n appears once in the second row and twice if we count the upper aiin. If we assume that y is equal to n (which is actually possible, as I mentioned in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but in this case it is an assumption), we can increase the maximum number to four. However, there is no room for the last a in the word maria. It is possible that maria is an attempt to correct the word marix. Possible values: e or ee = i.

3).
 The word paldcn does not fit in the third row because it does not have a d. However, it may be related to the word olkeechy if y = a. It could just be a failed attempt at decryption. 

4).
 ar occurs 1 time, and the letter m in the passage "so nim gas mich" occurs twice. It is possible that the word char is actually mich. (these same letters are found in pchedar - michiton. This is similar to the anagrams I also mentioned in my thread). The letter n appears in the passage once, and the letter a appears accordingly. I have written ubreƞ in the same passage for completeness, because it may be hidden among the unsolved letters.

5).
 Most likely, tc cetr ceve is an unsuccessful decryption of some word. Outwardly, it resembles the fact that the author incorrectly applied his alphabets (or something else?) and got first tc, then cetr, then ceve, and then realized that he was mistaken. There is no place for these words in the text.

6). 
Regarding miltod, I would like to point out that the letter m could be ra. But it's not a fact...

What do I think? 
There are two versions here:
1). If this is the transcription of an enthusiast who is not related to the author of VMS, then his methods of transcription were probably focused on a German-language result. He didn't know how to spell d. He may have had two alphabets, although the matches are stable (bigram/letter-Latin letter). Apparently, the decryption principle was based on substitution (possibly even based on Roman numerals!). An unusual coincidence for me was n = a. If n is the Roman I, then this fits a, which is the first letter of the Latin alphabet. He probably added i wherever he thought it was necessary (thus, mch became mich; although it makes sense for German that ch = ich).
It's not certain that this decoding is correct... 
2). If this decryption is made by a person who has received a recommendation from the author or knows something about the encryption method, it may indicate that the text is indeed an anagram. For example, in the words char (mich) and pchedar (michiton), the letters ch and ar are in the same order at the beginning and end, and they are also decrypted in the same order, but in reverse.
The person who deciphered it probably didn't know enough to get a complete and meaningful result, except for so nim gas mich (this part, in my opinion, falls on char cheeol s or or, which are mostly separate letters. It was probably easier to work with them).

We can try to fish out hints:
n = a
y = a?
ch = ich/ch
e or ee = i
ar = m

However, I'm inclined to believe that this is someone's not-so-successful attempt at decryption. This is the best explanation for the features I have described.
By the way, this translation is definitely wrong. Pchedar is not the name of any "medicine" (but if it is an anagram, it might be), and it is found in balneology, including at the very beginning of folio f75v. Most likely, the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. recipe may have a translation such as "This activity in the morning strengthens your blood" or "Drink this to improve your blood (or anything related to the human body)". 
But I think the approach to deciphering was close to the right one. Apparently, the author first deciphered the text and then assembled words from the combination of letters.
He may have been close to the correct translation in that f104r.28 is indeed a spell.
I'd like to dig deeper, but unfortunately, we don't have a shovel yet...
In any case, this example can help us to study the difference between Currier B and Currier A. As we can see, there are no clear boundaries between words in Currier B (but in Currier A, they are probably distinguishable. At the very least, I assume that there is a single set of Voynichese words that corresponds to only one word, and this set does not overlap with another set, i.e., another word*). 
It also seems that in Currier B, the letters of the source text are rearranged in an unclear order. But there is some kind of correspondence: qokaiin qotaiin d - l cphaiin d (d after iin); olcheear chedar (two words with ar consecutive lines in the text); or or

*In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I analyzed an encryption algorithm that could theoretically be a simplified version of Currier A, the algorithm used to encrypt the text in the first part of the manuscript. I don't want to reiterate all my guesses about the cipher here, because this thread isn't really about that...
Maybe the poxleber swear word was left on top because the decrypter was unhappy with his work Big Grin
Someone suggests that the single m at the end of the first line, f116v, is a capital n, or an initial.
Logically, this letter corresponds to the part aiin, and ar is transferred to the second line.
N is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, and if we symbol a is ei, then we get the combination eiiin. This is similar to XIIII - 14 in Roman numerals (as far as I remember, in the Middle Ages, four was written this way).
M is the 13th letter, so ar is eir, but... However, if you change r to in, you get eiin - XIII.


The logic of the incompetent decoder was to get a word with vowels. Perhaps this is how he got "marix morix" and "paldch ubreƞ"
(Yesterday, 11:55 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.N is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet

13th. No J.
(Yesterday, 01:06 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.13th. No J.

Was K always included in the alphabetical order?
(Yesterday, 01:06 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(Yesterday, 11:55 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.N is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet

13th. No J.
Forgot... Apologize.
But this fact can tell us more about the decipherer's supposed alphabet. It may have contained the letter J. This suggests that the author of the annotations likely lived in the 16th century.
But it's debatable...

(Yesterday, 01:32 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(Yesterday, 01:06 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.13th. No J.

Was K always included in the alphabetical order?
As far as I remember, in the early period, it could stand after H. Then it was used more often than we can see in the later versions of the Latin that has survived to us.
(Yesterday, 01:32 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Was K always included in the alphabetical order?

Yes.
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