Cipher Mysteries

In the last few days, several people have independently asked me to summarize my "The Curse of the Voynich" Voynich Manuscript theory (that it is an enciphered copy of Antonio Averlino [Filarete]'s lost books of secrets). Good theories generally improve when you retell them a few times: for example, back when I was first pitching my new type of ...

It's been an interesting day: Edith Sherwood's Voynich website got Slashdotted - given that Cipher Mysteries picked up 4900 visitors from that tsunami of geeky clicks, edithsherwood.com itself must have had (say) 30000 or more. And then (just now), ORF released a teaser press release for next week's "DAS VOYNICH-RÄTSEL" documentary to their (German-language) website. So, the ...

Once upon a time, when I was trying to research the cryptographic history of Sforza Milan 1450-1500, it became painfully obvious that I had to build up a proper understanding of Francesco Sforza's chancellor Cicco Simonetta: more than just a 'gatekeeper' or even a 'lynchpin', Simonetta was the very lintel above the door, the central architectural feature silently and powerfully ...

A copy of Marcello Simonetta's new book "The Montefeltro Conspiracy" (2008) has just arrived in the post (I first mentioned it here). I must admit to being a bit excited, as he covers a lot of ground I'd had to wade slowly through in the Italian sources when writing my own book - Cicco Simonetta, Francesco Sforza, the ...

Once upon a time, history was a really hard subject to enjoy: a dreary rollcall of [macho/loser] kings and [powerful/scheming] queens, endlessly (a) conspiring against other, (b) fighting expensive wars where both sides tended to lose, and/or (c) endlessly frittering extorted tax money on self-glorifying monuments masquerading as high culture. Then along came a new generation of "social historians", who despised ...

Here's a book I'm really looking forward to reading: "The Montefeltro Conspiracy", by Marcello Simonetta (due for hardcover release 3rd June 2008, 304 pages). Readers in Italy will get to see it earlier: Rizzoli will be publishing the Italian version first, on 26th April 2008... the 530th anniversary of the well-known Pazzi conspiracy. And here is why I'm ...

Here's a cryptography story from Italy that is astounding (though perhaps not for good reasons). I found it thanks to an Italian blogger who called it the new Voynich ('il nuovo Voynich'), but that's perhaps a little bit strong. While on trial accused of a "massacre" ('strage Erba'), the accused writes down a long series of enciphered notes in a ...

Sorry for posting like an overexcited puppy, but my Voynich book's first citation is surely worthy to me of a minor celebration: less than a backflip, but more than a raised eyebrow. The just-published (January 2008) Cryptologia article where it is mentioned is "Cicco Simonetta's Cipher-Breaking Rules", by Augusto Buonafalce, who so generously reviewed my book in the ...