Distinguishing Characters

[Mark Knowles]

Better raise a glass on the New Year

Although I don't drink I wish all a Happy New Year!

So here's to the New Year.

Yes, I certainly want to wish health and happiness to everyone. Best of luck, one and al!

In fact on the last occasion that I asked you then you said that you thought the Voynich to be written in cipher.

Just to be very clear, all the collected evidence about the behaviour of the Voynich MS text tells me exactly the opposite.

This is quite a turn around from your paper "NOT the solution to the Voynich MS" by René Zandbergen from 2021 where you discussed similarities with Voynichese and a verbose cipher; from just a year ago.

Likewise your gear wheel theory was, though in fairness you didn't realise it, a simplification of a cipher that I proposed; with the unnecessary element of having physical gears where a lookup table will suffice. I am certainly not suggesting plagiarism as I am quite confident that you didn't understand what I was proposing, though it didn't stop you from criticising it absolutely. I have not bothered to argue over priority for this theory as it is not one I now think correct, so it would be a bit of a waste of energy.

From what I can tell you jump from explanation to explanation for Voynichese, whether it be an invented language or verbose ciphers or gear wheels, which is perfectly fine, but when you start to make emphatic and confident statements like "Just to be very clear, [it] tells me exactly the opposite" it seems odd with reference to a theory you advocated just recently.

To quote you: “In general, I just don’t know which is the correct or even most likely answer, so I prefer to keep all options open.

This seems at variance with the certainly that you expressed in your previous statement.

My opinion of the nature of the Voynich cipher, that it is descended from diplomatic ciphers, hasn't changed in years. Of course, not changing your mind is not necessarily a good thing, but it is indicative of some kind of consistency.

than trying to sort out what you think that I may have thought about ciphers, because the latter will take us back into threads that were locked by the moderators...

It is pretty clear what you thought. This is hardly a figment of my imagination as you seem to suggest. I am sure we don't need to reopen or refer to locked threads to  observe this...