geoffreycaveney's Middle English theory

[geoffreycaveney]

Since I first wrote the draft paper attached to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. above in this thread, I have extended the set of cipher rules for determining when to read/write words backwards instead of forwards. Here is this set of backwards words cipher rules as I have currently identified them:

Words may be written forwards or backwards. But this decision is not made at random or arbitrarily; rather, the forwards or backwards order of words is in line with the “Yorkist” theme of the cipher wherever possible, as the following rules will explain:
 
A word is written backwards if doing so will achieve any of the following “Yorkist” appearances of the word as written on the page:

• If it will make the “Y” character appear first in the word, as in “YORK”
  
• If it will make the “K” character appear last in the word, as in “YORK”
  
• If it will make the first letter “b” of the detested “BolingBroke” appear last in the word
  
• If it will make the first letter “m” of the Yorkist claimant to the throne “MortiMer” appear first in the word
  
• If it will make the “r” character appear last in the word, as in “MoRtiMeR”
  
• If it will make the “p” character appear first in the word, as in “Percy”
  
• If it will make the “th” character appear first in the word, since the “th” character is similar in shape to the “Y” character
  
• If it will make the “n” character appear first in the word, since the “n” character is similar in shape to the “m” character
  
• If it will make the “t” character appear first in the word, since the “t” character is similar in shape to the “p” character
  
• If it will make the “f, v” or “d” character combinations appear first in the word, since they contain the “p” and “t” characters respectively
  

Yes, these rules create a large number of "Yorkist cipher homonym" sets. That is part of the extreme difficulty of the cipher. But it is also a very good explanation for the low entropy values measured in the Voynich MS text, as well as for the unusual restrictions on which characters and combinations can occur in which parts of a word, the beginning, middle, or end. 

Geoffrey