The Voynich Ninja

One of the useful conclusions of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. connection with f104r.28 is the data about the recipe section, specifically that various spells and similar items can be collected there, in addition to recipes.
In particular, it can be deduced that spells are marked with a (fully?) red star. 
Since the stars often alternate, we can assume that each recipe has its own spell. Based on this logic, f104r.29 could be a recipe that uses goat's milk, for example.
I also have a possible explanation for why this translation was made and why it was in the manuscript - it was made by one of the users who had difficulty translating a specific recipe/spell. He left the note just for himself.

In my opinion, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may be divided into at least three distinct parts (excluding the drawing in the upper-right corner).

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The text inside in the red rectangle appears to be Michitonese proper. The text inside the blue rectangles may contain notes in Middle High German or Early New High German, while the two items inside the green boxes appear to be Voynichese "words".

(28-07-2026, 05:31 PM)Carnby Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In my opinion, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may be divided into at least three distinct parts (excluding the drawing in the upper-right corner).

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The text inside in the red rectangle appears to be Michitonese proper. The text inside the blue rectangles may contain notes in Middle High German or Early New High German, while the two items inside the green boxes appear to be Voynichese "words".

Well, Michitonian may be a distorted form of German/Bavarian.
And is there any point in this division? What do so nim gas mich (gaf mich, gasmilch?) and poxleber ??? ??? mean individually (I don't know how to read these words)?

(28-07-2026, 04:03 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One of the useful conclusions of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. connection with f104r.28 is the data about the recipe section [Starred Parags section, SPS], specifically that various spells and similar items can be collected there, in addition to recipes.

If one rejects the "SPS = SBJ" claim and its evidence, then there is no clue about the contents of the SPS.  It could be recipes, psalms, daily weather predictions, the Catholic You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with cribs for the sermon of the day, a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.,  The Poor Richard's Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grandpa's Almanac, a copy of 365 Things To Do In Zero Gravity that fell from a passing UFO, a list of 365 remedies and their indications, etc..  Or even a list of handy spells and curses for all occasions.

The occurrence of aror Sheey on f104r.28 is certainly noteworthy and does suggest some shared theme between those twop pages.  However, in order to conclude that the parag of f104r.28 is a charm, one must also reject the claim that the Big Wipe (or Big Spill) theory for f116v: that the original text, all in Voynichese, was accidentally wiped out (except for those two words) and replaced by a nonsensical "recostruction" with pseudo-Latin and pseudo-German words, including that "charm".  One must instead assume that the whole text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is meaningful in some language, and was written at the same time as the rest of the book.

Quote:In particular, it can be deduced that spells are marked with a (fully?) red star.  Since the stars often alternate, we can assume that each recipe has its own spell. Based on this logic, f104r.29 could be a recipe that uses goat's milk, for example.

This suggestion has additional problems.  

• The pseudo-Latin text of the charm on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is embeded in the pseudo-German text, not a separate parag. 
  
• There are no stars on f116v, just as there are no stars on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. after line 30 or so.  
  
• The stars in most SPS pages have alternate colors, but there are a few hiccups.  While those hiccups may have other explanations, one possibility is that the colors are meaningless decoration.  (Mathematically speaking, an alternating sequence of 0s and 1s of any length contains at most one bit of information.)
  
• In fact, there is reason to suspect that the color spots in those stars, like the color paints elsewhere in the book, were applied long after the book left its Author.
  

If one accepts the Big Wipe theory for the "Michitonese" text of f116v, then a more likely theory for the original Voynichese text is that it was a continuation of the text on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -- apparently a "postamble" or epilog for the SPS.

All the best, --stolfi

(28-07-2026, 10:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Mathematically speaking, an alternating sequence of 0s and 1s of any length contains at most one bit of information.

I don't think so, any sequence of length N may contain at least lb(N) bits of information. Cue unary numeral system. Alternating 0 and 1 is lb(N) + 1, since the sequence may start with either 0 or 1.

(28-07-2026, 10:47 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think so, any sequence of length N may contain at least lb(N) bits of information. Cue unary numeral system. Alternating 0 and 1 is lb(N) + 1, since the sequence may start with either 0 or 1.

Correct.  If the length is not known in advance, it would be part of the information contents.

I wonder if people have ever used for real lengths of things etc to encrypt hidden messages within innocent or misleading ones?  Like, the number of letters in each line, modulo 26, is one letter of the message?  Or the length N of the paper in 1/16ths of an inch is an index into a codebook?  Does Trithemius and his gang mention this possibility?

All the best, --stolfi

(28-07-2026, 11:11 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wonder if people have ever used for real lengths of things etc to encrypt hidden messages within innocent or misleading ones?  Like, the number of letters in each line, modulo 26, is one letter of the message?  Or the length N of the paper in 1/16ths of an inch is an index into a codebook?  Does Trithemius and his gang mention this possibility?

Yes, as far as I remember. There were hundreds of different schemes that could use unary, mainly to encode messages in images. Most of them were optimized to use binary * (two counts to encode the character position in a 2d table), but in principle would work with unary, that just would be very cumbersome. For example, there was a scheme that used the count of leaves and flowers in plant images, with branches used to separate characters. Like, two leaves and one flower on the first branch, then 5 leaves and no flowers on the second, then 3 leaves and 3 flowers on the third - three characters encoded. It was impossible to encode large texts this way, but 1-2 words per image was possible. I think it was not used for communication, but to state hidden identities or as easter eggs - encoding names and mottos.

*edit
I don't think this can be called binary, binary is positional, while this encoding essentially is more like compressed unary. So, with item V corresponding to 5 and item I to 1, 22 (as 22nd letter of alphabet) can be encoded as VVVVII or VIVIVV or VVIIVV. Or maybe even VIIVIIIVII. Given that the Roman numerals are made in a similar way with additional restrictions, this encoding would be obvious for most people of the time.

(28-07-2026, 10:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It could be recipes, psalms, daily weather predictions, the Catholic You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with cribs for the sermon of the day, a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., The Poor Richard's Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grand-Grandpa's Almanac, a copy of 365 Things To Do In Zero Gravity that fell from a passing UFO, a list of 365 remedies and their indications, etc.. Or even a list of handy spells and curses for all occasions.

Yes, and the entire VMS may have been written by an alien civilization that created the ancient Egyptian pyramids, in a proto-Roman variant of Arabic-Latinized Hebrew...
The "collection of recipes and spells" version differs from all of the above in that it is more banal and logical. For a book that is clearly related to medicine, this is not a contradiction or anything supernatural.

(28-07-2026, 10:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.However, in order to conclude that the parag of f104r.28 is a charm, one must also reject the claim that the Big Wipe (or Big Spill) theory for f116v: that the original text, all in Voynichese, was accidentally wiped out (except for those two words) and replaced by a nonsensical "recostruction" with pseudo-Latin and pseudo-German words, including that "charm". One must instead assume that the whole text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is meaningful in some language, and was written at the same time as the rest of the book.

I don't know a language in which this spell would make sense.
I haven't canceled the reconstruction or the Big Spill. It looks absurd to me, i.e. letter substitution. If the author, say, "outlined" the contours of the erased letters, he could see that it is not l, not b, and not the rest of the Latin letters. Halfway through, he must have realized that it didn't make sense. 
On f17r, as you say, there is also a watery spot, and there are two words in Voynichese. Apparently, the same slacker is responsible for this as for f116v. What does this mean? The owner did not read the book at all? He did not even bother to open it? He deliberately did not look at the text on the pages? He deliberately skipped all the pages except You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f116v? Even after realizing that it was not Latin, he continued to write nonsense?
The reason for the Big Spill may not be just someone's mistake. It could have been done on purpose to leave room for decryption, but the author quickly became desperate.

(28-07-2026, 10:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The pseudo-Latin text of the charm on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is embeded in the pseudo-German text, not a separate parag.

Well... I don't argue with that. I don't see any contradiction in it, because:
1). It's likely that this decryption is not entirely accurate, so it could simply be a mistake. The decrypter might have believed, for example, that they should receive a German spell, but they did not do it well.
2). It is possible that the pseudo-Latin was created due to errors made by the author, who distorted the German text during the transcription process.

(28-07-2026, 10:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are no stars on f116v, just as there are no stars on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. after line 30 or so.

Should they be?
I'm sorry, but I don't understand the essence of this argument. Why would the decoder need to draw stars?

(28-07-2026, 10:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The stars in most SPS pages have alternate colors, but there are a few hiccups. While those hiccups may have other explanations, one possibility is that the colors are meaningless decoration. (Mathematically speaking, an alternating sequence of 0s and 1s of any length contains at most one bit of information.)

It is possible that the alternation of "white/yellow - red" is a recipe + corresponding spell. I do not know about other cases and cannot explain them, but it is possible that some recipes did not require a spell.

(28-07-2026, 10:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In fact, there is reason to suspect that the color spots in those stars, like the color paints elsewhere in the book, were applied long after the book left its Author.

Maybe. However, this does not mean that SPS can't be a collection of more than just recipes. We don't know for sure.

(28-07-2026, 11:11 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wonder if people have ever used for real lengths of things etc to encrypt hidden messages within innocent or misleading ones?

(29-07-2026, 09:46 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For example, there was a scheme that used the count of leaves and flowers in plant images, with branches used to separate characters.

There is also this very interesting concept:

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Julian Assange himself worked on such a method some time ago.

(29-07-2026, 10:47 PM)LiviuV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is also this very interesting concept:

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Julian Assange himself worked on such a method some time ago.

Vol 3 of Trithemius' Steganographia is a 500 years old example of deniable encryption, and a very good one, only broken in the 1990s. For 500 years the prevailing opinion was that the decoy covertext is the only message.