Cipher Mysteries

The century since Wilfrid Voynich unearthed his now-eponymous manuscript has seen many groups of codebreakers take a tilt at its cryptographic windmills. The most famous of these was William Friedman's "First Study Group" of WWII cryptologists: but I've recently become interested in finding out to what degree WWI codebreakers tried to get in on the act. Those were the halcyon days ...

"The Chaocipher" is a devious cipher system invented in 1918 by John F. Byrne: allegedly, it was so complex that nobody could crack his challenge ciphertexts (even with the plaintext to refer to!), yet was so simple that its mechanism was claimed to comprise only two rotating disks small enough to fit in a cigar box, and could be operated by a ten-year-old (admittedly a ...

At the start of my own VMs research path, I thought it was important to consider everyone's observations and interpretations (however, errrm, 'fruity') as each one may just possibly contain that single mythical seed of truth which could be nurtured and grown into a substantial tree of knowledge. Sadly, however, it has become progressively clearer to me as time has passed that any resemblance between ...

For the most part, constructing plausible explanations for the drawings in the Voynich Manuscript is a fairly straightforward exercise. Even its apparently-weird botany could well be subtly rational (for example, if plants on opposite pages swapped their roots over in the original binding, in a kind of visual anagram), as could the astronomy, the astrology, and the water / balneology quires (if all ...

With my book publisher hat on, I'd guess that the pitch for this book probably said: "Codes! Ciphers! Cryptograms! Masonic stuff! For Dummies!" And yes, the authors (Denise Sutherland and Mark E. Koltko-Rivera) pretty much seem to have delivered on that basic promise. But... is it any good? Bear with me while I sketch out a triangle in idea-space. On the first vertex, I'll ...

If you combine the thoughts I posted yesterday (suggesting that the "o[r]aiiv" word in the top line of f67r1 might encipher "luna") with the "or oro ror" sequence on line #2 of f15v (which would appear to be a verbosely enciphered Roman numeral, probably "CCCC"), the two would superficially seem to be incompatible. How can the Voynichese "or"-pair encipher ...

I remember when I first saw the "Roger Bacon Manuscript": Wilfrid Voynich brought it with him to Philadelphia for his lecture back in 1921 - my old friend Bill Newbold was there, taking in every word, nodding like the crazy-but-brilliant spiritualist and Antioch-obsessed nutter he was. So it just had to be Bacon behind it all, right? I sat at the ...

Ethel Voynich's story (1864 - 1960) is quite fascinating: while the young Ethel ('Lily') Boole was studying music in Berlin, she became inspired by Stepniak's revolutionary writings. As a result, she became closely involved with Russian dissidents living in London, and in 1893 married the very charming Wilfrid Voynich. Voynich himself often travelled around as part of the ...

It's not widely known that the US National Security Agency has a small section at Fort Meade devoted to the history of code-breaking: The Center for Cryptologic History. As well as making scans of a number of useful documents available on its website (most notably Mary D'Imperio's "An Elegant Enigma"), the CCH convenes its own history of cryptology ...

A modern day Baron Frankenstein (actually, a mild-mannered Norwegian) has wired up the electrodes to a monstrous-looking zombie most thought long dead. It rises! It stands! It lives! It liiiiives!!!!! I'm referring, of course, to the whole idea of using wobbly cryptography to prove that Francis Bacon = William Shakespeare, that David Kahn somewhat derisively called "enigmatology". Note that I'm not saying the ...