Cribs in the Voynich MS

[oshfdk]

1) Count the patterns
2) Mix the words
3) Count the patterns again
4) Compare the results

Mixing the words will destroy the LAAFU properties of the text, and some of the vertical patterns can certainly appear by chance just because some character combinations prefer ends of lines and some other combinations starts of lines.

I think a better test would be randomizing the order of the internal (not the first and the last) lines of paragraphs. Also, we don't have a reliable way of counting the patterns, so maybe we just need to find some people who haven't yet memorized the manuscript to any significant extent and show them the scrambled and unscrambled versions of the same page and just ask which one appears to have more vertical patterns.