Distinguishing Characters

[MichelleL11]

If it did then I can see the only explanation would be that it was invented by a great genius who was able to make such an intellectual leap out of nowhere. I would be surprised if we weren't well aware of this genius from another context. As we know the likes of Da Vinci is too late. So overall I see this as an unlikely, if attractive, explanation.

Thanks, Mark for the list of possibilities from your view.  I don't have any particular additions at this time, but if a different one should come to my attention I will be sharing.  I'll also consider a deeper dive in these possibilities and will come back with anything of significance.

I did want to add my thoughts on the idea of a "genius."  It is possible, but I think extremely improbable.  Although truth can be stranger than fiction, over time I have come to discard anything in explaining the Voynich that feels like it comes from a novel.

And a genius (likely a misfit shut up in a castle tower, right? with the five scribes hired by his noble family to keep him (or her, I suppose) busy? sitting somewhere in misty central Europe?) is just that -- quite fictional.  Frankly, I find the medieval hoax idea with no content more compelling than that, although it moves us away from a functional cipher which is quite in keeping with the time's psychological view of how written secrets were "protected" and thus a strong counter to that position.

Time and time again strange images in medieval work have had, after some intense Googling, revealed concrete explanations.  I think the text will fall to a similar explanation -- it's just harder -- in part because manuscripts with pretty (or any) illustrations are scanned in first and because less study has been done on unusual texts than unusual images.  It is so much easier for a scholar to note "Geheimschrift" (secret writing) in a catalog and then just move on rather than actually figure out what was done.

I'm going to continue looking.