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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
- IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
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RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
oshfdk > 03-02-2026, 04:57 PM
This might have work years ago. Now I can just say:
ALL SOLUTIONS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE SO
and no matter what discovery is made, I probably would be able with some computing power to retrofit something plausible as an anagram of this.
Note that this could cover any potential future discovery. -
RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
Mark Knowles > 03-02-2026, 04:59 PM
So what is the "Important Announcement"? -
RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
asteckley > 03-02-2026, 05:35 PM
(03-02-2026, 04:57 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.ALL SOLUTIONS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE SO
and no matter what discovery is made, I probably would be able with some computing power to retrofit something plausible as an anagram of this.
The key is the "probabilty". There is a finite and limited number of potential solutions but, wIthout the information provided in the reveal, all solutions are equally corect...and equally wrong. That is because there exists no criteria to evaluate them relative to each other. After the reveal, however, there is new information available to correlate with each candidate and it is highly improbable for any of them but one to have a relevance as strong as the one correct one (assuming the SDA was well designed.) Importantly, the anagram solution does not contain the complete discovery itself but only enough information to indicate the author was aware of the whole discovery. -
RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
oshfdk > 03-02-2026, 08:14 PM
(03-02-2026, 05:35 PM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it is highly improbable for any of them but one to have a relevance as strong as the one correct one
This is something I'm not at all sure of. In the past the task of constructing an anagram for a given meaning from a predefined sequence was prohibitively hard, but nowadays it may be much easier on a computer. Most anagrams made by hand sound a bit quirky and unnatural anyway, so as long as one can produce somethings specific, it might work even if the grammar is not perfect.
If I have time for this exercise, once Jorge_Stolfi publishes the announcement, I may try to come up with a good "decoding" of "what I meant" by ALL SOLUTIONS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE SO. It's a gamble, but I won't be surprised if it's possible to get a reasonably plausible result quickly, up to the point where it will be hard to tell which one is more relevant. -
RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
asteckley > 03-02-2026, 10:12 PM
(03-02-2026, 08:14 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(03-02-2026, 05:35 PM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it is highly improbable for any of them but one to have a relevance as strong as the one correct one
This is something I'm not at all sure of. In the past the task of constructing an anagram for a given meaning from a predefined sequence was prohibitively hard, but nowadays it may be much easier on a computer. Most anagrams made by hand sound a bit quirky and unnatural anyway, so as long as one can produce somethings specific, it might work even if the grammar is not perfect.
If I have time for this exercise, once Jorge_Stolfi publishes the announcement, I may try to come up with a good "decoding" of "what I meant" by ALL SOLUTIONS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE SO. It's a gamble, but I won't be surprised if it's possible to get a reasonably plausible result quickly, up to the point where it will be hard to tell which one is more relevant.
But what does that matter? The purpose of an SDA is to prove the fact that, regardless of who first publishes the discovery (i.e. solution to a bigger problem), the anagram's author was "first", and that he had already made the discovery at the time that he produced the anagram.
It is true that with modern computer resources, you can tackle the anagram and FIND all possible rearrangements, and perhaps do so more efficiently. But that does not help to make any of them at all relevant.
The anagram might be such that it produces several (albeit a finite number) semantically sensible solutions. Say, for illustration, that the anagram has 30 characters and there are a dozen rearrangements that actually make some semantic sense. Now, prior to the author simply disclosing his intended solution in order to demonstrate that he was the first to discover the answer to the scientific problem, people can try to find all those possible solutions to the anagram. And they can do that quickly using a computer, or slowly --and perhaps incompletely-- by slogging through manually. But even if they find them all, the anagram solution that the author intended is not meant to give the answer to the scientific problem. It is only meant to have enough correlation with the answer that it would be highly improbable to occur from the anagram simply by chance -- and therefore will demonstrate that the author had discovered the answer before composing the anagram.
If one happens to find a solution to the anagram that not only makes some semantic sense, but also points a direction that suggests an answer to the scientific problem (which the intended solution might well do), then they might attempt to pursue it and discover the answer before the original author gets to his "reveal". And if more than one of the dozen solutions happens to not only make sense, but also provides possible pointers towards the answer to the scientific problem (which is highly, highly improbable), then so what? That just means there is more than one possible path for the would-be plagerist to waste time going down in hopes of making the discovery himself before the big reveal. But the fact that the original author published the anagram -- and it produces any solution that correlates with the actual answer to the scientific problem -- still secures the fact that he discovered it first. -
RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
ReneZ > 03-02-2026, 11:38 PM
(03-02-2026, 03:01 AM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Unfortunately, Jorge, people do seem to be missing the point of the SDA. Looking forward to your reveal, though.
Well, one can hardly post an anagram on a forum full of people dedicated to solving a riddle, and not know exactly what will happen.
(I had sent my guess via PM
)
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RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
oshfdk > 03-02-2026, 11:52 PM
(03-02-2026, 10:12 PM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But what does that matter? The purpose of an SDA is to prove the fact that, regardless of who first publishes the discovery (i.e. solution to a bigger problem), the anagram's author was "first", and that he had already made the discovery at the time that he produced the anagram.
I'm not talking now about Jorge_Stolfi's anagram, because I believe that Jorge_Stolfi is acting in good faith. However talking about the use of anagrams in principle, I can claim now that the eventual solution to the Voynich Manuscript lies in the anagram of:
ALL SOLUTIONS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE SO
and when in 1-5-10-20 years someone would publish a solution, I could find an anagram of the above that seems to describe this solution and say "told you so N years ago". Likewise, if I wasn't sure that Stolfi was acting in good faith and someone else now would come up with the same discovery before the "important announcement", Stolfi couldn't effectively use the anagram to prove being the first, because it's impossible to prove that Stolfi really meant "USES NAME INDIA" and not "NUDE MEN IS ASIA" or something entirely different.
Moreover, until I "publish the official decoding" of "ALL SOLUTIONS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE SO" I can claim the priority in any anagram protected solution made after this moment.
Overall, I don't think anagrams are an effective way of proving/verifying priority nowadays. -
RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
JustAnotherTheory > 05-02-2026, 12:37 PM
Stupid question, but why not just lay out your theory in a few paragraphs and digest it with MD5? Wouldn't that give an even stronger proof of authenticity? -
RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
Jorge_Stolfi > 05-02-2026, 01:44 PM
(05-02-2026, 12:37 PM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.why not just lay out your theory in a few paragraphs and digest it with MD5?
If this was a forum about cryptography, I would have to do that, sure. With a 8192-bit key and an extra DES layer to confuse would-be crackers.
But this is a Medievalia forum. MD5 would be widely off-style. And you must agree that the anagram method is more fun...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)
Koen G > 05-02-2026, 02:14 PM
What's the timeline we're currently looking at for the big reveal?