Distinguishing Characters

[Mark Knowles]

Mark,

there is no need to get excited.
My paper "Not the solution...." describes a method to raise the entropy of the Voynich MS text to a level similar to that of known meaningful text. And quite as the title says, it is not meant as a solution to the MS text.
There are reasons why this will still not work.

On the paper about Cardan grilles, this describes a train of thought that I had already many years ago.
Quite possibly even before you joined the Voynich MS fora, though I can't say for sure.
If you recognise some of your own ideas in it (which I am sure you will be able to point to) then good for you.

This thread has become quite boring, so also here this is my last post to this one.

Rene, I was not excited, I was annoyed.

This started with you saying that: "any case, my main concern with respect to the discussion is the term 'The cipher'. We do not even know if there is one, or, if there is a method, it is anything like 'a cipher'"

You were pretty dismissive about my suggestion that tracking down historical ciphers was an endeavour with much use to Voynich research. And more than that stated your absolute confidence that the Voynich is not written in cipher. Though in the past and on your website you have expressed a great deal of uncertainty in the matter.

I agree that what you have said is not a discussion of great interest, so it is unfortunate that you chose to be so dismissive of the idea that research into historical ciphers was of real value to the understanding of the Voynich, especially as I am trying to increase interest in the Voynich community in this topic, where the majority of people in a poll have said that they believe the Voynich to be enciphered.