Can we go further?

[eggyk]

I think there is still huge difference between a riddle designed to be solved, even a very hard one, and an artifact which, most likely, was not intended to be read by outsiders (be it a ciphertext, a hoax, an unknown language). A riddle should be solvable in principle by logic and by trial and error. Voynich Manuscript may be unsolvable without some additional information, which could by now be already lost.

So "would remain unsolved forever" is a very real possibility.

But I don't feel like VMS research is stuck, I'd say it is progressing as swiftly as ever. There are plenty of things to try.

Yes, of course. It's more just pointing out the noticeable similarities in the solving process in both and the spread of opinions that arise in the respective communities.

In my example, it was very possible that noone would ever have solved it without additional information. In principle, it was solvable, but only if you knew what to do. Trial and error and logic alone wouldn't have helped, as there was a connection, or a leap of logic, or a guess, or luck, that was needed that everyone had missed. There were a million other different logical paths and a million ways to iterate along those paths, and every one of them would have failed. At the time, most people looked at the solution and said "okay, but how on earth were we meant to know to do that?". The VMS may end up being the same.