How good is your pareidolia?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Here is a clip of page f1v, spanning the last few words of lines 9 and 10 (the last ones on the page): 

   

What fantastic things can you imagine seeing on the indicated places?

A)
B)
C)
D) (this is the hardest)

Honors question: find the s in that image (not near B).

(Stay tuned on this thread for my own answers, next week or so.)

All the best, --jorge

[RobGea]

A)  Single Horn of a Water buffalo.
B)  Crouching Inuit throwing a harpoon.
C)  Julius Caesar's nose from the Asterix comics.
D)  A Dragon.

[Koen G]

A)  Single Horn of a Water buffalo.
B)  Crouching Inuit throwing a harpoon.
C)  Julius Caesar's nose from the Asterix comics.
D)  A Dragon.

Is it too early to call a winner for the Pareidolia competition? 

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Is it too early to call a winner for the Pareidolia competition? 

Nah, sorry, but that B is not acceptable. He can't possibly be seeing that.  Where is the harpoon?  An Aborigine throwing a boomerang, that I can see, but....

And that D is a no-effort guess.  Andy Medieval mariner would say that.

All the best, --jorge

[Koen G]

Are we supposed to see glyphs/letters or go full force superzoom "they would have needed a microscope to do this" pareidolia?

[oshfdk]

This is definitely a fish ( C ):

   

And this is the rear view of a sitting cat looking back over its shoulder (B):

   

[oshfdk]

( A ) is a bit harder, but could be a toad with big eyes:

   

( D ) is a very good life like portrait of the author of the Voynich MS sitting at the desk, nice find!

   

[bi3mw]

As an aside, I am always skeptical when it comes to recognizing things by zooming in on the VMS. The page format of the manuscript is rather small at 23.5 cm × 16.2 cm, and even the commonly available reprints are relatively large in format. When zooming in, you can “recognize” all sorts of things, and some researchers seriously derive assumptions or insights from this. In my opinion, this often crosses the line into pareidolia. If you try to recognize things for fun, as in this thread, then everything is fine, but when it comes to serious observations, you should always do them with a healthy dose of cautiousness.

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Are we supposed to see glyphs/letters or go full force superzoom "they would have needed a microscope to do this" pareidolia?

That was supposed to be part of the quiz... But let me say only that it is not about steganographia or anything like that. The question is not "what were the intended readers of the book expected to see".  It is not "what did that thing mean to the Author". It is not "what would probably be seen at that point in 1440".  It is just what you honestly think you are seeing there now.

Oh, an the quiz is not just fun.  Whatever the outcome wil be, it is about a very important issue.

All the best, --jorge

[Jorge_Stolfi]

As an aside, I am always skeptical when it comes to recognizing things by zooming in on the VMS. 

Indeed. Even because at higher magnifications the only new things you will see are JPEG artifacts.

But while the Scribe could not control the pen and the ink with accuracy better than ~0.1 mm or so, the actual VMS has details of all sizes, down to single atoms, that potentially could give us useful information.   The quiz would include such details, if you happen to see (or hallucinate) them in those scans at normal (100%) magnification.  The pixel size in those images is ~0.067 mm. Displaying that image with 200% magnification would not reveal anything new, but may be helpful if you have a display with small pixels and/or you don't have eagle vision...

All the best, --jorge