Cipher Mysteries

Though the Voynich Manuscript has many unusual and interesting sections, arguably the most boring of the lot is Quire 20 ('Q20'). This comprises a thick-ish set of six text-only bifolios (though with a central bifolio missing), where just about every paragraph has a tiny drawing of a star/flower/comet shape attached to it. Tally all these up, and you find that Q20 as it now is has between 345 ...

A recurring motif running through my own Voynich research is trying to grasp what happened to the manuscript over time. If you examine it carefully, you'll find plenty of good reasons to think that its original ('alpha') state was significantly different to its final ('omega') state. My strong hunch is that if we were able to reconstruct how the manuscript looked in its original state, we would take a very ...

As a Voynich Manuscript marginalia cognoscente, I'm always alert for new angles on the various incidental marks apparently added by its later owners. So, when Tim Tattrie left a comment about the "chicken scratch" marginalia on my recent Voynich-frontiers-circa-2010 post, I thought it was probably time to revisit them here. Tim's query was whether anyone had pursued the initials scribbled ...

There are colours in my eyes, history flickering and sputtering as a beautiful infinity reaches out to hold my bloodsoaked hand... * * * * * * The Brazilian girl's plan is stone-cold in its vision, fractal in its detail, awesome in its thinking. Yes, the organizers have put the necessary overnight protection squad in place: but the two guards merely ...

I think that there will always be films based around codes because they give screenwriters such an "easy in". Just saying "code" conjures up... Dark secrets (e.g. heresy undermining The Church, free energy undermining The Market, occult powers, any old stuff really) Powerful interests (usually multiple conspiracies fighting each other behind the scenes for control of 'The Secret') A central McGuffin that is ...

The Internet is a strange thing, a virtual photographer's jacket crammed with countless pockets of enthusiasts. For example, you beautiful cipher mysteries fans circulate within one bijou (but nicely-appointed) pocket, while the massed legions of Slashdot fans have a Tardis-style hyperzoom lens pocket all of their own. But... what would happen if these two worlds collided? A chance to find out came in December 2009, when ...

Today's first Voynich quote was overhead yesterday by Bill Tozier in an Ann Arbor restaurant (I presume?):- I'm gonna find some fascist architecture! Hmmm... might this have been that rarest of things, a Cipher Mysteries reader caught in the wild? Better still, might it have been a CM reader happy to 'fess up? The comments section is ready and waiting ...

Some more thoughts on the curious "key" sequence in the Beale Papers... Back in 1980, Jim Gillogly applied the Declaration of Independence codebook for the second Beale Paper ("B2") to the first Beale Paper ("B1"), and discovered a very unlikely sequence in the resulting text: ABFDEFGHIIJKLMMNOHPP. The chance of the middle section alone ("DEFGHIIJKLMMNO") occurring at random is about one ...

It seems as though penetrating public cryptographic analysis of the three Beale Papers (B1, B2, and B3) halted abruptly in 1980 when Jim Gillogly pointed out a problem with B1. If, as he pointed out, you apply to B1 the same dictionary code used for B2 (famously derived from the Declaration of Independence), you get a ciphertext with some distinctive ...

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 ...