Cribs in the Voynich MS

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Well, we could do such a test but it wouldn't convince you of anything. Then I could do some formal statistical test and compare the results. But if they were different and VM had more of these patterns you would say it just means that VM has a different structure from my chosen Latin manuscript and nothing more. And VM is most probably not in plain Latin anyway so it is an irrelevant result.

I am not claiming that the "vertical patterns" in the VMS are chance coincidences.  I am only warning you that they may be.   So you should not assume as a fact that "the VMS has an unnaturally large number of vertical patterns".

I could invent some formal definition of them and count them in the entire manuscript. It would be a long, tedious and boring job. Then I could do the same for some manuscript in Latin.

This can actually be done by computer with a modest amount of work.  I could do it myself if I didn't have a dozen other computer analysis projects going on...

So the options left and usually mentioned are: 4) an exotic language ... But "exotic language" is a solid, concrete bunker with thick walls which ... disproving is equally hard.

It is hard to absolutely disprove "Latin with a complicated cipher", "gibberish", or "nomenclator".  But there are only a limited number of plausible candidates for the "exotic language".  If that is the case, it will eventually be solved.  Even without knowing the language, one could identify key words and common sentence structures, and maybe match those with one of the candidate languages.   It would be more like deciphering Hittite, Minoan Linear B, or ancient Maya, than cracking Enigma or the Zodiak Killer letters...

I believe we should try in the future to discuss these options and maybe try to prove if some are more possible than others.

Well, I am quite convinced that it is an exotic language in the plain, written phonetically. 


 Possibly with 20% of errors.  Check the diary of the Lewis and Clark expedition, a military mission that explored the Western US in the 1800s, before the Pioneers went there.  It has an amazing amount of spelling errors, and totally inconsistent.  I once counted 4-5 different spellings of the word "buffalo", sometimes two in the same paragraph.  If the VMS is like that, it will make decipherment quite a bit more, ahem, "fun"...

All the best --stolfi