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Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

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• Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  nablator > 10-02-2026, 03:44 PM

  (10-02-2026, 03:13 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In English 100% of "tc" occur afer "e" and are word-final...

  
  Like pitch, watch, bankruptcy?

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  MarcoP > 10-02-2026, 03:56 PM

  (10-02-2026, 03:37 PM)Grove Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (10-02-2026, 02:09 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (10-02-2026, 12:56 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Plaintext "m" = iii   (or iin   at word end)

  
  ~100% of 'm' occur after a, and/or are word-final. Natural languages are not like that

  
  This assumes the space equates to a word boundary. Theoretically, couldn’t the spacing and character relationship be a feature of an encryption scheme?

  
  Yes, in that case it is not a simple substitution.

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  eggyk > 10-02-2026, 06:47 PM

  (10-02-2026, 02:09 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (10-02-2026, 12:56 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Plaintext "m" = iii   (or iin   at word end)

  
  ~100% of 'm' occur after a, and/or are word-final. Natural languages are not like that

  
  I thought I made it clear that I'm trying to discuss the possibility that transliteration alphabets have potential blind spots in their use.  
  
  I feel like you're arguing why my specific example does not fit the VMS. I never said it fits the VMS? I just said that it considers something that isn't normally considered by the transliteration alphabets, and that those types of things may affect entropy. 
  
  
  Not to mention that the exact example you quoted was literally a hypothetical example with a Latin Script plaintext. I was just expressing it using the EVA font to make a point.

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  Jorge_Stolfi > 10-02-2026, 07:08 PM

  (10-02-2026, 03:20 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.you had to cherry pick bigrams instead of characters... this tells a lot

  
  What do you mean? Spanish "ü" is a single letter that can occur only after "g", and  Greek "ς" is a single letter that can occur only at the end of a word.  And Mandarin "ng" is a single sound (IPA "ŋ" or thereabouts) that can occur only at the end of a syllable (= word).
  
  Portuguese (and Italian) "h" can only occur after 3 (2) specific letters, or at the start of a few words (where it is silent, so it would be omitted in a more rational spelling).
  
  And your example iin is a trigram...  
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  MarcoP > 10-02-2026, 07:28 PM

  (10-02-2026, 06:47 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I feel like you're arguing why my specific example does not fit the VMS. I never said it fits the VMS? 

  
  It would be "wise" to ask yourself why your examples do not fit the VMS.

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  asteckley > 10-02-2026, 07:32 PM

  (10-02-2026, 07:28 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (10-02-2026, 06:47 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I feel like you're arguing why my specific example does not fit the VMS. I never said it fits the VMS? 

  
  It would be "wise" to ask yourself why your examples do not fit the VMS.

  
  Quickly pulling up examples for illustration purposes and finding that they don't happen to hold up under closer analysis for other purposes, hardly undercuts the point he was making.

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  Koen G > 10-02-2026, 07:52 PM

  I would love for someone to show that simple substitution could work, because that would mean we're in business again of trying to solve the text in the most straightforward way. I spent a long time on this, trying from various angles, but I didn't find a way to show that simple substitution is feasible. And with that, I join a long line of previous researchers.
  
  Hopefully we missed something. But if you are convinced that simple substitution is a theoretical option, then showing some concrete steps and their effect on the statistics would be helpful. The tools are available.
  
  My prediction is this: Voynichese is so inherently problematic, that by looking for a way to make it work for simple substitution, you will have to do many things that are not simple substitution.

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  eggyk > 10-02-2026, 08:05 PM

  (10-02-2026, 07:28 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (10-02-2026, 06:47 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I feel like you're arguing why my specific example does not fit the VMS. I never said it fits the VMS? 

  
  It would be "wise" to ask yourself why your examples do not fit the VMS.

  
  What's with the hostility? For a second time you quote the only part of what I said to do with my specific examples which were just off the top of my head and completely ignored the rest of what I said. 
  
  Whether or not there are potential changes (not specifically my examples)  that make it like normal language, they could change the entropy results which are taken for granted in other discussions. Maybe such potential types of changes could change them to be "ever so slightly less unusual but still very unusual" or maybe they will make no difference or maybe they would make a huge difference. 
  
  That's the point of the thread, to discuss potential shortcomings with the current usage of transliteration alphabets. NOT to tell people exactly how they could change and NOT to push my examples as solutions. 

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  Koen G > 10-02-2026, 08:16 PM

  The thread title "Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?" implies a judgement (unwise) on those who rule out simple substitution (people like Marco, myself and many others). So this is the rebound of that. But let's remain friendly.
  
  My answer to your question is this: we have ruled out simple substitution through the compounded efforts of many dedicated researchers. But you will only accept this when you experience it for yourself. So once again I encourage you to run some experiments and report on what you found.

• RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?

  RadioFM > 10-02-2026, 08:26 PM

  Many people turn their attentions to cracking Labelese first, thinking they have a better shot at guessing a crib/cartouche. This is a good playground to try out different parsings of symbols. Words are short, a few anomalies here and there, and you can make educated guesses of what a certain label says, should the text be meaningful and related to nearby drawings.
  
  IMHO the fact that nobody was able to make a dent on Labelese, even with such short words where the possibilities of parsing glyphs are limited, is one of the big culprits of cementing the idea that simple substitution is unlikely. Positional rigidity and other observations have only cemented it further.
  
  Even if we were to correctly parse the characters, even if we had the right transliteration, there's some explaining to do about word statistics. There's some explaining to do about duplicate labels, quasi-reduplication...
  
  Personally I'm not convinced our transliterations sit at the root of the problem, but honestly I've yet to run the numbers properly. So, thanks for bringing this up.
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