The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level

The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - Printable Version

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RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - lurker - 05-05-2021

(04-05-2021, 10:32 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I also don't understand this comment.

Let me explain it differently.

Stolfis grammar describes dependent choices. It must therefore be possible to choose between different wheels for each position.

Stolfis grammar also describes optional rules. Therefore the number of wheels has to be variable.

RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - ReneZ - 05-05-2021

(05-05-2021, 12:42 AM)lurker Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(04-05-2021, 10:32 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I also don't understand this comment.

Let me explain it differently.

Stolfis grammar describes dependent choices. It must therefore be possible to choose between different wheels for each position.

Stolfis grammar also describes optional rules. Therefore the number of wheels has to be variable.

Wheels can have empty cells. It is the case for the example in Figure 1.

On the first point, the observed dependency can come from different word frequencies in the plain text.
Also, certain groupings can be together on a single wheel.

It is exactly this search for groups, preferred combinations, forbidden combinations, that this paper might usefully lead to.

RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - Davidsch - 05-05-2021

Another option that is not discussed but can be a method that gives similar results as a Cardan Grille and that is using sequences that count up to a particular point, then mutate, and then fall back to a predefined position which is often the same or shows an altered primary position (the latter case can be perhaps seen in the Rohonc, but that's another unfinished story).
Anyhow, the final result will resemble a grille with nullified text, but it isn't.

RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - ReneZ - 05-05-2021

Hi David, could you give an example?

By the way, the Rohonc probably deserves its own thread.
I'm still waiting for the new book by Benedek Láng to become available.

There should also be a second paper in Cryptologia reasonably soon, from the two proposed solvers.

RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - RenegadeHealer - 05-05-2021

I was going to say @Davidsch, before Rene beat me to it, I feel like the method you describe merits a simple illustration. I'm intrigued, but I think I'd have to see it visually to fully understand how it works. What you describe immediately brings to mind Patrick Feaster's observation that the segments or "syllables" of vords seem to cycle, at different rates and seemingly independent of each other (or dependent in a way that isn't simple or obvious), over the course of a Voynichese paragraph. He illustrates this with sliding strips on his webpage. I have an image in my head of three completely different sized gears interlocking and turning each other, with each gear then rotating at a different speed. If one were to number each sprocket tooth, and then make a sequential list of which teeth make contact with which others as the gears turn, one might come up with a pattern very similar to the "deep patterns" Prof Feaster sees in Voynichese.

@Rene, I'm very much looking forward to Lang's work on the Rohonc Codex too. I'm no cryptography expert, but I think what both the VMs and the RC might end up teaching us, is that encipherment techniques in the olden days may have been much more varied and sophisticated than the received historical record would have us believe. After all, if I really wanted a piece of information to remain secure, I'd come up with a wholly novel and unprecedented method of encipherment, and never talk or write about how it works.

RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - Mark Knowles - 08-05-2021

In this paper there are what the author has termed fragments. I wonder when the idea of mapping 3 or 4 letters to a sequence of Voynichese characters was first suggested. Obviously I appreciate that this idea was not original to this paper, though the unusual 3 wheel system very probably was. However it would be of interest to know how far the idea dates back and who originated it.

RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - ReneZ - 08-05-2021

I used "word fragments" in order to avoid the more common term syllables, such as used also by Gordon Rugg.
The latter has a specific meaning, which does not have to apply to what I am doing. The parts do not have to be syllables at all.

I do not understand exactly what is meant with "mapping of 3 or 4 characters to a sequence of Voynichese characters". The paper proposes a range of possibilities and options, and where earlier ideas have been reused it is clearly mentioned (e.g. Rugg and Stolfi).

Verbose ciphers in general (including so-called "word games") have been mentioned since the beginning of the old mailing list (1990's) and one case in the paper would be an example of that.

RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - Mark Knowles - 08-05-2021

(08-05-2021, 05:56 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I do not understand exactly what is meant with "mapping of 3 or 4 characters to a sequence of Voynichese characters".

I was referring to the following:

"The choice of three wheels with 24 different entries each also allows other possibilities. The number 24 represents the number of characters in the Greek alphabet, but also Latin (when equating I with J and U with V) and Italian (when not considering k or w). A text in any of these languages could have been split into groups of three characters, where each character would then be mapped to a Voynich word fragment according to the three wheels. This is of course highly speculative."

I also note you say the following:

"In case the wheels are used to set up an enumeration system, it is not even needed to actually create the wheels and turn them. The combinations can be written down without this. This may be illustrated by Table 9, which shows a set of wheels that would generate all Roman numerals up to 4999"

I don't know either when that kind of thing was first suggested.

RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - Davidsch - 08-05-2021

(05-05-2021, 12:02 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi David, could you give an example?

By the way, the Rohonc probably deserves its own thread.
I'm still waiting for the new book by Benedek Láng to become available.

There should also be a second paper in Cryptologia reasonably soon, from the two proposed solvers.

In this case, at this point I can not provide examples nor explain it further.
I regret to have made this comment, because it was a bit too cryptic and it was nothing more than a thought that was wrongly formulated by me.

RE: The Cardan grille approach to the Voynich MS taken to the next level - julian - 03-08-2021

The paper by Rene is inspirational!

After reading it a couple of times, some playing around with Stolfi's Core/Crust/Mantle grammar and trying various ways of placing the gyphs within a set of co-rotating three wheels, I found that the following machine is able to account for ~93% of the words in the VMS. (I showed this in the inter-Gallows counts thread, but it's more appropriate here.)

[Image: crustmantlecorewheels2.png]

A VMS word can be reproduced from these wheels using the following prescription:

Select none or more glyphs from the outer ring
Append none or one glyph from the middle Gallows ring
Append none or more glyphs from the inner ring

I suppose this may be simply a pictorial representation of Stolfi's grammar? It certainly doesn't get us any further, but I throw it in anyway. I am obsessed with the notion that a few cipher wheels were used to generate the text, perhaps geared together, and perhaps with cams that rotate adjacent wheels at certain positions :-)