Cribs in the Voynich MS

[ReneZ]

If the Voynich MS were a regular cipher from the late middle ages, even a relatively complicated one, then these cribs would have been extremely helpful.

The "Umkehrschluss" is that the complete lack of success in using these cribs is just one more piece of evidence that the Voynich MS is not like a regular cipher.

It would have taken only a few good guesses of the well over a hundred plants.

That the first words of the herbal texts do not seem like plant names (I agree) is because there is something else going on there. Again evidence that there is more than a regular cipher at work.

Every single chapter / recipe on a herbal page is a potential example of the block paradigm. This was already realised before this term was coined, and it was equally realised that theses texts do not show anything of the typical patterns one finds in plant descriptions / recipes.

Then again on this last point I am not sure how thoroughly these comparisons have been made.
There could still be something there.
Even just a comparison of the text length distribution (in words) between the Voynich MS and a representative alchemical herbal shows a promising similarity.