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Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
- Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
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RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > 30-09-2026, 04:47 PM
(30-09-2026, 04:24 PM)pjburkshire Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(30-09-2026, 03:58 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
But I see unicorns... Well, actually, I see the story too. Just not the one you see. Unfortunately, that’s how the world works
Have you posted your story on this forum? If so, please direct me to it. I would like to read it.I wanted to write you a long message about my opinion, but the Russian internet didn’t let me do it...
In short, this is a book about anatomy; all aspects of medieval medicine here are, perhaps, examined from the perspective of anatomy. The book served as a reference for a doctor or (which I consider more likely) a group of doctors. It could have been encrypted due to fear of punishment or an unwillingness to disclose the knowledge.
This is very short. Perhaps, if you want to discuss this, it’s not here. Here, I want to talk about the cipher. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
JoJo_Jost > 30-09-2026, 09:03 PM
The VMS text is highly structured, and in this form, it doesn’t fit into any linguistic framework; I’m certain it doesn’t fit with European languages, among others, and I’m becoming increasingly convinced that it doesn’t fit with Chinese either.
The problem: Someone just has to have come up with a cipher that’s somewhat “crazy”—by which I mean one that doesn’t correspond to normal, common ciphers—and that could have happened in the 15th century, but also in any other era. And just like that, you have a cipher that can’t be cracked. That’s much less anachronistic than many people might imagine. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Jorge_Stolfi > 01-10-2026, 01:50 PM
(30-09-2026, 02:50 PM)pjburkshire Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(30-09-2026, 02:40 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The reason seems to be that, if it was merely a plain text in a funky alphabet, (1) it would have been cracked 100 years ago,
Not if it was a natural language that the person did not know. I don't read Russian. I don't care what alphabet or font you use, I don't read Russian.
That quote is what I think "everybody" thought. Not what I think.
I fully agree with your first sentence (and even said just that myself, recently, on this forum).
But many of the people who tried to crack the manuscript in the last 100 years could read Russian. Starting with Wilfrid himself, and then with the Bletchley/NSA people. And many more probably could recognize a text as being in a Slavic language even without understanding it.
Hence my claim that, if it was a plain text in any "European" language (including Russian, Finnish, Basque, Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew) , just in a funky alphabet and orthography, it would have been cracked long ago.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Jorge_Stolfi > 01-10-2026, 01:54 PM
(30-09-2026, 03:20 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(30-09-2026, 02:40 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.How many known 15th century cipher documents are there that are full of illustrations?
That quote is not mine, it is by someone else -- and I agree that it is not a good argument.
A you know, I believe that it is not cipher -- but for other reasons.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Stefan Wirtz_2 > 01-10-2026, 02:26 PM
(01-10-2026, 01:50 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]
Hence my claim that, if it was a plain text in any "European" language (including Russian, Finnish, Basque, Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew) , just in a funky alphabet and orthography, it would have been cracked long ago.
A claim, yes.
But what makes you sure that this was tried systematically und completely for all european languages?
I don‘t find any tries for several languages and heavily doubt there was a systematic browse through it all.
And it is not helpful to hope or trust for any „grassroot deciphering“ or swarm intelligence covering this task somehow randomly in completeness by the time gone.
You see this forum as a good example: the concentration upon somehow an ˋalpine´ solution or Italian/Latin-origin is unreasonable, but unbroken. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Mauro > 01-10-2026, 02:31 PM
(01-10-2026, 01:50 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hence my claim that, if it was a plain text in any "European" language (including Russian, Finnish, Basque, Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew) , just in a funky alphabet and orthography, it would have been cracked long ago.
All the best, --stolfi
I agree with you on this. Were the VMS a meaningful text written in a major, well-attested (circum)European language just in a funky alphabet and orthography (I would also add with abbreviations and/or substitutions) it would much probably have been cracked by now. I'd even go as far as saying that even among not-so-well-attested languages many (ie.: most Romance languages) would have been cracked. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > 01-10-2026, 03:58 PM
(01-10-2026, 02:31 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
In general, this argument is also flawed, since Cryptos is also written in “some kind of European” language.(01-10-2026, 01:50 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hence my claim that, if it was a plain text in any "European" language (including Russian, Finnish, Basque, Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew) , just in a funky alphabet and orthography, it would have been cracked long ago.
All the best, --stolfi
I agree with you on this. Were the VMS a meaningful text written in a major, well-attested (circum)European language just in a funky alphabet and orthography (I would also add with abbreviations and/or substitutions) it would much probably have been cracked by now. I'd even go as far as saying that even among not-so-well-attested languages many (ie.: most Romance languages) would have been cracked.
When it comes to decryption, language alone cannot be the immediate key to it if we can’t say anything about the encryption algorithm itself. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Jorge_Stolfi > 02-10-2026, 11:21 AM
(01-10-2026, 02:26 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
But where did you look?(01-10-2026, 01:50 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hence my claim that, if it was a plain text in any "European" language (including Russian, Finnish, Basque, Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew) , just in a funky alphabet and orthography, it would have been cracked long ago.
But what makes you sure that this was tried systematically and completely for all european languages? I don‘t find any tries for several languages and heavily doubt there was a systematic browse through it all.
Over the past 100+years, for any "European" language L there must have been dozens of speakers of L who saw the VMS and guessed it was L with "just a funky alphabet and orthography". If that was the case, some of those people would have easily cracked it.
(In fact, many became convinced that it was indeed L with a weird alphabet and spelling, and persist on that belief to this day. Many others eventually realized that it was not the case, and gave up before posting their theories.)
(01-10-2026, 03:58 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In general, this argument is also flawed, since Cryptos is also written in “some kind of European” language.
But the Kryptos challenge is not "just a funky alphabet and orthography". AFAIK, historical cipher challenges that have been hard to crack (like Copiale, Kryptos 1-3, and the Zodiac Killer letters) were definitely encrypted, in ways that made it impossible to indentify the words.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Stefan Wirtz_2 > 02-10-2026, 11:11 PM
(02-10-2026, 11:21 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But where did you look?
Yes, where did you look?
Is there any list or summation of tries to find "L"? No.
(02-10-2026, 11:21 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Over the past 100+years, for any "European" language L there must have been dozens of speakers of L who saw the VMS and guessed it was L with "just a funky alphabet and orthography". If that was the case, some of those people would have easily cracked it.
You are loading assumptions upon assumptions with this.
First block of assumptions is that all speakers of European languages (don't need the "" here) had sufficient access to VMS material, and the interest to experiment with that riddle, even though the Wilfriedian Circle gave clear directions to Latin and-so-on.
I am sure that ~8-9 billion people on this earth right in this moment do not know or care anyhow about the VMS. Percentage of non-interest amongst Europeans will reach 99%.
Even today, not knowing the Beinecke link, you may find only several internet images of some pages, re-prints and other second-source material which makes it harder even to recognize enough of Voynichese.
It is a gift to have full access to digitalized folios -- but how was that during the 114 years since 1912? Easier?
The second block of assumptions is that all speakers of European languages do have a clear idea of the ~1420s versions of their languages,
are even present at sufficient numbers today (for example the last Livonian speaker, an old lady, died in 2013 and her language is extinct since then),
and have a lot of understanding for finding their (good old) language in a complete artificial writing system.
By this, you come up with probabilities and the hope for a fully field-covering, randomly-experimenting swarm which should have found something meanwhile.
But this forum here is a good petri dish to see that the ideas keep clustering around some main stream, stylish tendencies or just the most popular narratives.
You yourself once gave a short list of those more exotic European languages, including some caucasian:
if you put those into the search field, you will only find your own mentioning for most of them -- maybe not much to read about Laz or Tatar etc.
So, were to look for all Europeans that tried to crack it?
