Cipher Mysteries

Here's a particularly interesting Voynich Manuscript paper declassified by the NSA in 2002 (but only recently released as a PDF scan) - so many thanks to the ever-vigilant Moshe Rubin (of Chaocipher Clearing House fame) for pinging me with a link to it, much appreciated! :-) Of course, Brigadier John Tiltman's The Voynich Manuscript - "The Most Mysterious Manuscript ...

A highly surprising message just arrived here at Cipher Mysteries from our Chaocipher Clearing House chum Moshe Rubin:- Is your readership aware that NSA has placed the entire text [of Mary D'Imperio's "An Elegant Enigma"] on its site? I couldn’t find the link on your site so here it is! This is a great find, highly recommended for all Voynich ...

Sometimes a passing comment can open up a brief window onto an otherwise lost world. A 2002 email I made to the VMs mailing list I stumbled upon earlier today brought to mind one such instance, and six years on I found myself wondering just what had been said, what had been going on in a very particular context. Let's start with ...

A German Voynich article by Klaus Schmeh just pinged on the Cipher Mysteries radar screen: the ten-second summary is that in an interesting mix of observations and opinions, Schmeh clearly enjoys playing the skeptic trump card whenever he can (though he still fails to win the hand). In some ways, Schmeh's bias is no bad thing at all: authors like ...

Every few days, I get asked to recommend a good introduction to the Voynich Manuscript (the 'VMs' for short). But each time this happens, my heart sinks a little: given the size and scope of historical research you'd need to have to properly grasp the subject, it's a bit like being asked to recommend a good 5-page encyclopaedia. Or rather, ...

Just thought I'd post a quick comment about Vladimir Sazonov's suggestion that the "starred" recipe pages in the Voynich Manuscript form some kind of calendar, ie that they originally contained 365 / 366 stars arranged in some kind of date order. Here's his page (from Sept 2005) describing this idea:- http://voynich.naobum.de/star.htm The basic idea of a calendar here is not new: ...