Voynich text generation

[geoffreycaveney]

In a few minutes , I was able to generate this: "qodom qodeey otaiin olk otaiin shodeey okeey otaiin qodom qodeey otaiin otaiin ykain shotol qotol otaiin ydaim aiin ldor qotar qokaiin okos chokeey qokaiin aiin ldor qotar qokaiin otary ty odol qokaiin shodain tal okaiin olk otaiin chokain shotol qotol dam qokar qokaiin shodeey okeey otaiin aiin shodain qotain dain dal aiir chokair qold otey ldy dain daiir odol qotey otaiir okeey otaiin otaiin tal otar ydol tor qodol dam qokar qokaiin qokaiin al oiin oteey okal otaiin yky das chokor chodol dol chodaiin shodor qotaly choky doiin  d qokal qokaiin shodol olkar qokal aiin qoty dam otor dam qodor qodain d chokar olkain deey ary tain daiir odol qotey otaiir aiin qokaiin aiin shodain qotain dar chokain ytol".

I'll tell you how I did it.   Each pair of plaintext letters was encoded into a single Voynichese word.   The first letter was the prefix, the next letter was the suffix.   Spaces between words in the plaintext are significant, and diacritics were removed before encryption.   Plaintext letters, and Voynichese prefixes and suffixes, were ordered roughly in descending order of frequency.  So, it's a verbose cipher.   It might be too short to be breakable, but it's the beginning of a well-known text, roughly contemporary with the Voynich Manuscript, in a well-known European language.

Ok, I'm just going to throw this out there: I think Donald's text has got to be susceptible to decryption with the right cryptographic methods -- especially because he has generously given us a *lot* of clues here. 

For example, the ciphertext begins "qod-om qod-eey ot-aiin" and then the 9th to 12th words are "qod-om qod-eey ot-aiin ot-aiin". Furthermore, in between these repeated words, we have "ot-aiin" again as the 5th word *and* the 8th word (!), plus we have the "-eey" suffix letter occurring two more times, in the 6th word "shod-eey" and the 7th word "ok-eey". Clearly we have here a *lot* of repetition of letters in just the first 12 ciphertext words, which only represent the first 23 letters of plaintext (since the 4th word "olk-" appears to be a prefix without a suffix).

Expressing this verbose cipher as a more normal cipher, the pattern is  AB-AC-DE-F  DE-GC-HC-DE  AB-AC-DE-DE .

Plus Donald has told us it is the beginning of a well-known text in a well-known European language in the time period of the Voynich ms.

Surely this is more than enough information to decrypt the text. I'm a bit frustrated that I haven't cracked it yet, but I'm certain that a more experienced cryptographer could do so.

AB-A at the beginning is a huge clue, eliminating most candidate texts.  AB-AC-DE-DE as the 16th to 23rd letters are an even bigger clue, with all of the repetition of letters, along with the repetition of the first 7 letters of the text.

Another clue: the 2nd letter "-om" ("B" in my version) does not occur anywhere else in Donald's ciphertext except in these two places. So it is probably a rather infrequent letter.

Candidate words/phrases for the beginning include "nun...",  "sus(ter?)",  "ex e...",  "ab a...", each of which have rather infrequent 2nd letters.  "non ..." would be a good candidate, except that "o" is not likely to only occur as a "suffix" in these two places in the text. But it is possible.

Surely someone can break this cipher with all of these patterns and clues...