Comments on: The Voynich Cipher for code-breakers…

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:28:46 +0000

Diane: it’s a tricky one – for me, I’ve long thought that this was an alphabet that was designed less for a quill than for a biro (just kidding, I mean a stylus). As such, I’ve always seen its production as a two-stage writing process – the author/encipherer first writing it on wax tablets, and then a scribe copying out onto the page.

By: Diane

Diane — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:04:52 +0000

I’ve always thought that the Voynich script was very counter-intuitive for someone using a quill pen. (try it). Even with a metal nib, it is near- impossible to write fluently, from left to right, without either dragging the pen contrary to the norm. So many of the forms, if you try to form them fluently, just open the ‘nib’ and it is evident that to avoid doing this, the scribe had to constantly use two or more strokes for a single letter, and sometimes as many as three or four. Thoug obviously accustomed to the script, he’s not writing in the way that western alpabets usually work. I’m not talking about ornamental letters. But why use letter-forms which are necessarily slower, unless you are copying some original written with a different implement?

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 22:08:35 +0000

Stanley: people have been looking for “cribs” in all sections of the Voynich Manuscript for decades, yet with no success at all. If only it was that simple!

By: stanley clayton

stanley clayton — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:51:16 +0000

Has any one allied the washerwomens names to flowers in the voynicht codes then use the translations to decode the text,We have our roses and lilys,and most languages name their women after nice thing, Sorry if im a nuisance.

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:04:39 +0000

CRS: the reason that many linguists have claimed that Voynichese is a language (rather than a cipher) is that it exhibits many language-like features - lots of structure. At the same time, the point of mathematical ciphers is to remove structure from a message, which should (in theory) make it hard for code-breakers to get started. The paradox of the Voynich, then, is that while it looks simple and well-structured, it is apparently as hard to break as mathematical ciphers. However, that isn't to say that it is a mathematical cipher, just that it is as hard to break as one!

By: CRS

CRS — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 09:59:01 +0000

Has anyone thought or looked into it as a mathmatical cipher as far as what I am reading and hearing it seems that this would be a very plausable hypothesis

By: Diane

Diane — Sun, 23 May 2010 19:08:59 +0000

I think the point about the imbalance between odds and evens is interesting – and conjured up an interesting image viz. someone with a book that was to be read in the way that Hebrew and many Asian languages are. So the ‘evens/reverses’ would actually be our Odds/recto, and the handful of complementary references might suggest commentary, or imagery, facing.

By: Fastercat

Fastercat — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:35:41 +0000

I was reading the article about the Currier A/B and was thinking to myself that perhaps there are additional messages hidden. The text is a carrier for multiple streams of information.

You do have a good point though.

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:57:32 +0000

As I understand it, the whole point of the Bacon biliteral cipher was steganographic – to embed it inside natural-looking text to hide its presence. So why embed it in something as artificial as “qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokedy”?

By: Fastercat

Fastercat — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:48:44 +0000

“qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokedy”.
It could also be something simple like a Bacon Cipher version of ‘e’ AABAA. Time frame is wrong, but doesn’t necessarily mean the method is incorrect.