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The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
- The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
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RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
dashstofsk > 21-04-2026, 07:55 AM
(21-04-2026, 05:36 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.too structured to be a hoax
I feel that structure must be a necessary requirement for a successful hoax. The writer wanted to give the manuscript a semblance of a genuine piece of writing. Otherwise unstructured random writing would have been quickly dismissed as a fraud. -
RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
JoJo_Jost > 21-04-2026, 01:56 PM
(21-04-2026, 07:55 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(21-04-2026, 05:36 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.too structured to be a hoax
I feel that structure must be a necessary requirement for a successful hoax. The writer wanted to give the manuscript a semblance of a genuine piece of writing. Otherwise unstructured random writing would have been quickly dismissed as a fraud.
I see your point, and it’s a good one, but I seriously wonder whether, around 1430—a time when only relatively simple ciphers were known—anyone would have gone to such lengths?
Because one thing is clear: if it’s a hoax, then it must be extremely well-structured, and I’m afraid that’s an anachronism.
If it is a cipher, then the extremely good structure underlying it is precisely the language.
And that is why I am not a believer in the hoax theory...
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RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
dashstofsk > 21-04-2026, 05:38 PM
(21-04-2026, 01:56 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.it must be extremely well-structured
It matters not whether it is well structured or badly structured. The writer did not need to be too precise. It just had to be good enough, to fool people into believing it to be genuine. And it seems to have done that. All its owners, throughout the centuries, seemed not to have any suspicions, seemed not to have been troubled by all the oddities, mistakes, peculiarities, misspellings, inconsistencies, flaws, imperfections that we can see today. -
RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
nablator > 21-04-2026, 06:14 PM
(21-04-2026, 05:38 PM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(21-04-2026, 01:56 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.it must be extremely well-structured
It matters not whether it is well structured or badly structured. The writer did not need to be too precise. It just had to be good enough, to fool people into believing it to be genuine. And it seems to have done that. All its owners, throughout the centuries, seemed not to have any suspicions, seemed not to have been troubled by all the oddities, mistakes, peculiarities, misspellings, inconsistencies, flaws, imperfections that we can see today.
I'm equally convinced by both arguments. Do I have to choose? No.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -
RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
JoJo_Jost > 21-04-2026, 06:30 PM
All I can say is, the more I dig into the peculiarities of the VMS, the more I believe a language underlies it. There are so many language-like factors: relationships between glyphs, bigrams, trigrams; glyphs that avoid each other like the plague, and glyphs drawn to one another. Structures pointing to end markers. Even the first letters of a line are drawn - albeit weakly - to the first letters of the last word. So many small relationships that if someone tried to recreate this without an underlying language, it would be impossible to pull off.
It is precisely these subtleties that, to me, rule out a hoax - because the subtleties are maintained across 200 pages. And then there are the many small differences between the sections of VMS that make no sense as part of a hoax. Why would anyone change their "hoax process" just because a different section starts?
Way too much effort, and back then most people were already overwhelmed trying to decipher a simple substitution cipher with multiple vowel variants. Honestly, none of it adds up. In my opinion, the hoax theory contradicts everything that becomes clear when you take the historical context into account... -
RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
nablator > 21-04-2026, 06:40 PM
(21-04-2026, 06:30 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Why would anyone change their "hoax process" just because a different section starts?
This is speculative. If we had a solid rule (supported by strong evidence) that the way a section/page/paragraph/line starts (first character or gallows or sequence of gallows or whatever) has some consistent, measurable effect on some statistic over the rest of the section/page/paragraph/line, it would rule out the notion that it is random and hint at some kind of key or change of process. But we don't. So it could be... So far we have only the Vertical Impact Effect™ proving that the sequence of first characters of lines is not random.
(19-04-2026, 09:22 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is supported by the fact that I can already detect changes in the words following the initial letters, particularly p and t, but this is not yet statistically significant
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RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
JoJo_Jost > 21-04-2026, 09:23 PM
(21-04-2026, 06:40 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is speculative. If we had a solid rule (supported by strong evidence) that the way a section/page/paragraph/line starts (first character or gallows or sequence of gallows or whatever) has some consistent, measurable effect on some statistic over the rest of the section/page/paragraph/line, it would rule out the notion that it is random and hint at some kind of key or change of process. But we don't. So it could be... So far we have only the Vertical Impact Effect™ proving that the sequence of first characters of lines is not random.
I'm not quite sure I understand you correctly. Are you saying there's no statistical evidence to show that the text in the individual sections (Herbal, Astro, Recipes, etc.) behaves differently than in other sections? I actually thought that was common knowledge? There are a lot of interesting differences, although of course the label-heavy sections differ significantly, which is naturally difficult to evaluate... But even the text-heavy parts have distinct differences among themselves that are limited to the sections.
I’m asking because if I post these statistics here, I’d have to have them all checked, which is a lot of work... -
RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
nablator > 21-04-2026, 09:51 PM
(21-04-2026, 09:23 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not quite sure I understand you correctly. Are you saying there's no statistical evidence to show that the text in the individual sections (Herbal, Astro, Recipes, etc.) behaves differently than in other sections?
No, I meant we don't have anything linking the first glyph of lines to anything else (a global property, not local, of the same line/paragraph/page) AFAIK, so if there is a cipher we have no clue if it uses this first glyph as a key or in any other way that implies measurable consequences on the whole line/paragraph/page.
Actually this may be what you have discovered, but you wrote "this is not yet statistically significant".
(19-04-2026, 02:50 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Some bigrams appear to be highly group-specific (op, yp, ed); there are clear differences here.
Any rule or correlation like: lines/paragraphs/pages starting with <some glyph> have consistently more/less <some glyph or pattern> than other lines/paragraphs/pages could be helpful. -
RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
JoJo_Jost > 22-04-2026, 06:42 AM
@ nablator
Okay, now I understand what you mean.
Yes, I've already done that kind of calculation. For each of the 7 line-start markers as I define them (others work with fewer): o, qo, d, y, s, p, t - and ch / sh, I tested many properties of the remaining text in the line: gallow density, various endings, token length, line length, daiin rate, etc.
I deliberately limited this to text folios and omitted the diagram pages (f57v, f67–74 Zodiac, f85–86, fRos). At first, I had some incredibly good results, but these turned out to be artifacts from labels and other "contaminants" from those pages (sometimes you can still see this effect showing through in other calculations here in this forum).
The numbers are cross-checked, but I welcome any further verification. Who or what is ever error-free
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p-start is by far the most striking: 10 "global" properties shifted at once. p-start lines are longer, have longer tokens, significantly more gallows, more y-endings, less daiin, fewer bank-gallows, fewer repetitions.
But how to interpret this? The statistical background needs more careful thought than I've given it so far - without your question I wouldn't have published this table yet. For example, lines that have lots of gallows in them anyway might start more often with a "p" gallow, etc. So one has to be cautious with the interpretation - because "t" shows the same gallow effect as p, only weaker - which is a bit suspicious, or maybe a hint at some kind of "functionality" - who knows
qo and o go in the other direction - shorter lines or shorter tokens in the rest. ch and s also have clear signatures.
I find the ch signals particularly interesting, I've done some additional tests on those but that would go too far here.
(I'm sure everyone has known this all along, but for some reason it only recently fully clicked for me that "ch" is a glyph variant - and what that implies. The bench gallows are really just "ch" variants... I'd been thinking of them as gallow variants...)
What the table really means - cipher key, different text types, some other process - I don't know yet. But the rules exist.
That said, one should handle this data with some caution...
PS: I mentioned the bigrams: there are some notable patterns, but they are even more heavily skewed by statistical side-effects, so I don't want to publish them - they#d give a misleading impression. For example, if tokens following "p" are longer on average, then naturally more bigrams will appear after "p" as well, regardless of any real structural link.
The only genuinely noteworthy patterns I could isolate are that an "s" beginning attracts "ed," while a "qo" beginning repels "ar." -
RE: The first glyph of every line – a hint at a cipher?
tavie > 22-04-2026, 02:23 PM
(21-04-2026, 06:40 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. So far we have only the Vertical Impact Effect™ proving that the sequence of first characters of lines is not random.
I named it that before we had all the flood of slop theories with the three word names like Synthetic Delineation Framework. Regret it now.