Revisiting A Voynich Prize

[tavie]

A better way of addressing non-solutions would reduce the amount of time wasted on addressing these solutions.

I myself designed a test and I am sure more could be done to further that approach. There may also be other ways we can easily dismiss non-solutions.

This would mean that even if there are more non-solutions submitted in response to a prize then we should be able to handle them much more easily.

If I ruled the world, I would make all those who have found the solution complete a pro-forma before their claims can even be discussed, with mandatory questions such as "How does your solution explain line patterns such as ...", "How does your solution explain Scribe 1 doing X, while Scribe 3 does Y", etc.    So many people who believe they've found the solution, especially after a couple of hours browsing, aren't even aware of any, let alone all, of the manuscript's disturbing patterns.  

I think there was a website - maybe it was CypherBrain or Nick - that created a test.  They posted several lines taken from the manuscript, and one that is made up using scrambled Voynichese words and thus would be nonsense.  But only someone who had the true solution, or who cheated by looking up a transcription, would be able to tell which was the made up one. 

I liked that idea in principle, but I can't help but think that some people with extremely strong "sword in the stone syndrome" would still convince themselves that the test is at fault, not their solution, and so failing or in extreme cases even cheating it might not matter.

Edit: found the test You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..