04-09-2025, 12:33 AM
I also have many thoughts about this, which a short forum post cannot capture, but here are some points I think are relevant.
Currier mentioned features at the starts of lines and at the ends of lines, which can both be confirmed, but I am not so sure that his step to 'line as a functional unit' is entirely justified. I think it is entirely possible that these are localised features. On the other hand, the 'rightward and downward' work of Patrick is a different kettle of fish.
The 'line start feature' affect basically all lines. They are of a similar nature, but completely different in detail, for first lines of paragraphs vs. 'all other lines'. These are roughly as follows:
for first lines, 85% of cases start with one of 'p t k f' (in descending order of frequency).
For all other lines, 85% of cases start with one of 'd s y o q' (in descending order of frequency). Note that the 's' combines the stand-alone s and the left half of Sh, which is not optimal. (I computed these stats using the RF1b file, and both numbers were in fact 84% when rounded to zero decimal places).
For the line end feature, it is not so clear to me what Currier meant. I am aware of course of the appearance of 'm' and 'g', two things that are similar in nature. This affects only some of the lines, and I am not sure if he saw more. Here, it is possible that these are embellished variants of plain letters, and they are happy to appear also in short lines and even at the end of labels.
'g' looks like a 'y' with an extra loop, and replacing the g with a y will usually create an existing word.
'm' has often been considered a variant of 'r', but applying the equivalence of 'g' -> 'y', it could also be 'l'.
Both would lead to usually valid words.
It's a bit of a 'problem' that doing these substitutions further (somewhat) reduces the uniqueness of the labels, but that is more a subjective problem than a real one.
One can also occasionally see similar short words at the ends of consutive lines, but it is not clear if Currier was also thinking of this.
Indeed, line start and line end rules apply also to short lines. Line start rules do not seem to apply to labels.
One of the problems with the Voynich MS text is its relative lack of repeating sequences of words. This is aggravated in case one assumes that the text is a verbose cipher.
The line start and line end rules (whatever is their cause) may be one of the reasons for that, as they may introduce extra features to the flow of the text.
I have only experimented very little with this, but indeed, there are a few cases of repeating sequences that cross a line break. In those cases, the line break appeared at the same point in the two strings.
(I did this ignoring word spaces, but these also mostly ended up coinciding).
Currier mentioned features at the starts of lines and at the ends of lines, which can both be confirmed, but I am not so sure that his step to 'line as a functional unit' is entirely justified. I think it is entirely possible that these are localised features. On the other hand, the 'rightward and downward' work of Patrick is a different kettle of fish.
The 'line start feature' affect basically all lines. They are of a similar nature, but completely different in detail, for first lines of paragraphs vs. 'all other lines'. These are roughly as follows:
for first lines, 85% of cases start with one of 'p t k f' (in descending order of frequency).
For all other lines, 85% of cases start with one of 'd s y o q' (in descending order of frequency). Note that the 's' combines the stand-alone s and the left half of Sh, which is not optimal. (I computed these stats using the RF1b file, and both numbers were in fact 84% when rounded to zero decimal places).
For the line end feature, it is not so clear to me what Currier meant. I am aware of course of the appearance of 'm' and 'g', two things that are similar in nature. This affects only some of the lines, and I am not sure if he saw more. Here, it is possible that these are embellished variants of plain letters, and they are happy to appear also in short lines and even at the end of labels.
'g' looks like a 'y' with an extra loop, and replacing the g with a y will usually create an existing word.
'm' has often been considered a variant of 'r', but applying the equivalence of 'g' -> 'y', it could also be 'l'.
Both would lead to usually valid words.
It's a bit of a 'problem' that doing these substitutions further (somewhat) reduces the uniqueness of the labels, but that is more a subjective problem than a real one.
One can also occasionally see similar short words at the ends of consutive lines, but it is not clear if Currier was also thinking of this.
Indeed, line start and line end rules apply also to short lines. Line start rules do not seem to apply to labels.
One of the problems with the Voynich MS text is its relative lack of repeating sequences of words. This is aggravated in case one assumes that the text is a verbose cipher.
The line start and line end rules (whatever is their cause) may be one of the reasons for that, as they may introduce extra features to the flow of the text.
I have only experimented very little with this, but indeed, there are a few cases of repeating sequences that cross a line break. In those cases, the line break appeared at the same point in the two strings.
(I did this ignoring word spaces, but these also mostly ended up coinciding).
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)