The Voynich Ninja

Cool dude: I think most people will agree with this point of view.

Has it been noted that the columns are arranged like this? I use x's for the middle column:


It seems like someone wrote two alphabets to test one of the most simple ciphers: shifting all letters one spot.

(22-10-2016, 08:52 PM)cool_dude Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hello people.
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If you guys pay attention, there's a THIRD noticeable column, also with LATIN LETTERS...

And if you pay even more attention, you'll notice there is a fourth column, very faint and possibly incomplete.

It's been my general feeling for years that it's a failed code-breaking attempt. I always remain open to other ideas, but I haven't seen any that are compelling enough yet.

It seems that the wormholing has destroyed the Voynichese letter that corresponds to "c" in the first column of letters.  Yet the second ABC column seems to have been written so as to avoid the wormholes (look at how the "d" has been shifted to the left relative to the previous three letters).  That would mean that the first column was written before the wormholes were created and the second column after.

(22-10-2016, 08:52 PM)cool_dude Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My final conclusion is this third column, as well the first with second, could be possibly just a lot of frustrated attempts someone wrote on page to resolve the mysterious code, without any success. Simple like that...

If someone could sugest a counter argument back to mine, with a good perpective, please reply. I would be glad to receive other points of view.

I posted about this topic myself today as I hadn't realized it had been covered a while ago. The only thing that makes me hesitant to say these are failed attempts at a translation cypher is two fold: 

1) the characters and ink imo look very similar to the original handwriting of the author. I'm not a handwriting specialist so someone would have to be tasked to confirm that but they do look crazy similar in their shape, size and colour of the ink. 
2) If you would notice, this is one of many pages throughout the manuscript that has the ink from back page transfer to through during scanning, showing a bleed where heavy paint was used. Meaning to me that the parchment wasn't extremely thick, and transfer could have been possible while another sheet was placed over top while writing the cypher (it would have obviously have to been a back bleed to get the letters in the correct orientation). 

Just my two cents on the subject! I just wish some dating could be done on this specific part of the text so we could find out if the inks are the same, but I'm sure that would cause unwarranted damage to the document.

(17-09-2020, 09:19 PM)nihon.no.yume Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I posted about this topic myself today as I hadn't realized it had been covered a while ago. The only thing that makes me hesitant to say these are failed attempts at a translation cypher is two fold: 

1) the characters and ink imo look very similar to the original handwriting of the author. I'm not a handwriting specialist so someone would have to be tasked to confirm that but they do look crazy similar in their shape, size and colour of the ink. 
2) If you would notice, this is one of many pages throughout the manuscript that has the ink from back page transfer to through during scanning, showing a bleed where heavy paint was used. Meaning to me that the parchment wasn't extremely thick, and transfer could have been possible while another sheet was placed over top while writing the cypher (it would have obviously have to been a back bleed to get the letters in the correct orientation). 

Just my two cents on the subject! I just wish some dating could be done on this specific part of the text so we could find out if the inks are the same, but I'm sure that would cause unwarranted damage to the document.

The ink is similar. Gall ink was used for centuries and was still in use in the 16th century and beyond.

The handwriting is not similar.

If you want information on dating, read through the blog links I posted. The writing is consistent with 16th-century styles. This is not radio-carbon dating, but it is considered a professional method in the absence of carbon dating.

Who could have been behind this deciphering attempt? Not that it is relevant, but could it be an effort made by one of the "big players" in the VMs history? Or was it made after Kircher's death?

aStobbart, I actually think this is a good question. We know some of the social groups through which the VMS has passed.

I compared it to Marci's writing (Marci's scribe's writing) but it doesn't match. I tried John Dee. Doesn't match.

I've been gradually working my way though the various possibilities as I am able to find samples.

We don't know who had the VMS between the early 15th century and people in Rudolph's court. Timewise, it was probably one of them. The percentage of literate people was small, and many of them were professionals, so there is a possibility the person can be found.

Top of the first and third alphabets. I am not sure about what happens with the alignment of the third alphabet after 'c'. Is it going around wormholes? 'f' could also be shifted to the right, but there is another possible vertical stroke that is aligned with 'd' and 'g'....

It does look like they avoid the wormholes. I wonder which century/decade we're looking at, where people already wrote like this, but still found it perfectly okay to write alphabets straight onto the ancient vellum.

Logging this here for reference:


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Quote:"These alphabets will likely not help us actually decipher the manuscript," Fagin Davis You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. "This is because linguists... and other researchers have established that the manuscript is almost certainly not encrypted using a simple substitution cipher, and the substitutions in these columns result in nonsense anyway. Even so, they do add an interesting and new chapter to the early history of the manuscript. I look forward to hearing from other researchers about this new evidence, especially from experts in cryptography who may have ideas about why Marci or any other early-modern decrypter would need three columns of alphabets to do their work."