Voynich manuscript solved?

[pendell]

According to a paper at the university of Bristol. It will still take time to decode the entire thing, however.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[monomer]

According to a paper at the university of Bristol. It will still take time to decode the entire thing, however.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Last year a bunch of headlines were saying it was solved when someone decided that it was feminine hygiene manual, which was quickly debunked. I'm pretty dubious about this new claim until some more experts chime in.

[gomipile]

According to a paper at the university of Bristol. It will still take time to decode the entire thing, however.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

No, someone hasn’t cracked the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript, according to the Ars Technica article I learned about this particular story from.

But hey, I suppose time will tell.

[Algeh]

Last year a bunch of headlines were saying it was solved when someone decided that it was feminine hygiene manual, which was quickly debunked. I'm pretty dubious about this new claim until some more experts chime in.

I figure it's just a particularly complicated GURPS sourcebook. Should be some cool options once I figure out how to use them...

[factotum]

No, someone hasn’t cracked the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript, according to the Ars Technica article I learned about this particular story from.

Yeah, I read that and it doesn't sound very convincing, especially since someone pops up every year or so saying they've totally found the solution.

[snowblizz]

I think the clue is found in the statement of "solved it in 2 weeks in May". S'right.


I read on from the Ars article linked on a blog which had some fairly profoundly "debunking" things to say. Basically, if you take a small segment, apply lots of wishful thinking then yea, sure you've solved it. That the resulting text makes no sesne and doesn't seem to fit the context in which it's presented is, apparently, secondary.

[Yora]

I feel very convinced by the interpretation that it's an authentic 15th century fake alchemy book. If I recall correctly, the furthest it has been traced back was when it was sold to the King of Bohemia, known as a famous patron of the sciences, by an English alchemist, also known as a famous con man.

[Iruka]

People are still genuinely trying to 'solve' that? I had the impression that the consensus was that it was some kind of fake, be that a hoax to make money or just nonesense for the lulz.

[shawnhcorey]

It is not solved until a complete translation is made. Partial translations do not solve it.

Claiming it is a fake or hoax carries as much weight as claiming it is solved. If it is not completely translated, then any claims are lies.

[gomipile]

It is not solved until a complete translation is made. Partial translations do not solve it.

Claiming it is a fake or hoax carries as much weight as claiming it is solved. If it is not completely translated, then any claims are lies.

Unless it was somehow proved that it was originally gibberish.

If it turned out to be a hoax because it cannot be translated because there was no original plaintext for the gibberish, the statement that it is a hoax would not be a lie.

[Friv]

It is not solved until a complete translation is made. Partial translations do not solve it.

Claiming it is a fake or hoax carries as much weight as claiming it is solved. If it is not completely translated, then any claims are lies.

Technically, theories are not lies. They can be misplaced confidence, though.

I'm reasonably confident that the Voynich is a hoax, and there's enough evidence supporting that theory for me. Given the near-impossibility of proving a negative, I'm not sure how to prove something that old is a hoax. We're not going to find a 15th century diary discussing how the fake encryption was done.

[Yora]

I've seen some claims that there are patterns in the symbols that look very similar to patterns you would find in written language. They are apparently not jumbled together at random. Such patterns are quite difficult to understand, which in turn makes them difficult to fake. But you would get these patterns easily if you start with a real text and then encode it. If that's the case, then it should be possible to decode.
But you could still construct grammaticaly correct sentences with random verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This could perhaps make it more difficult to recognize that you're on the right path to cracking the code.

But that's assuming that such patterns where actually found, and that such claims are not an urban myth.

[factotum]

Unless it was somehow proved that it was originally gibberish.

If it turned out to be a hoax because it cannot be translated because there was no original plaintext for the gibberish, the statement that it is a hoax would not be a lie.

I don't think that's actually possible, though. The entire point of a code or cipher is to hide the original text so well that you can't decrypt it without knowing the key, after all, so there's not really a distinction between gibberish and a really, really good cipher.

[snowblizz]

, so there's not really a distinction between gibberish and a really, really good cipher.

Actually there is. The very very important point that a cipher is *meant to be opened*. Hence it's got a key and lock. And you can pick that lock. Gibberish is a solid cube with no key, no locks and nothing that can be done.


An humans do not do very good ciphers, that's the fundamental weakness in them, humans need to unlock them in almost all cases.


And if you look at the text it's not totally random, it even has stuff that's kinda of like latin. That's the main reason people are so fascinated. It seems like it should be possible to interpret.

[Radar]

Actually there is. The very very important point that a cipher is *meant to be opened*. Hence it's got a key and lock. And you can pick that lock. Gibberish is a solid cube with no key, no locks and nothing that can be done.


An humans do not do very good ciphers, that's the fundamental weakness in them, humans need to unlock them in almost all cases.


And if you look at the text it's not totally random, it even has stuff that's kinda of like latin. That's the main reason people are so fascinated. It seems like it should be possible to interpret.

Everything can be interpreted - our brains are geared for finding patterns even if there are none. Even if there are some linguistic hints of regularity and structure, it could still be an elaborate Lorem Ipsum - all the structure and still no messege behind it.

As for why anyone would go to such lengths to create a nonsensical document, it could simply be a fake ancient alchemical text sold to someone for a solid price.

[factotum]

Actually there is. The very very important point that a cipher is *meant to be opened*. Hence it's got a key and lock. And you can pick that lock. Gibberish is a solid cube with no key, no locks and nothing that can be done.

The point I was making is that you can't distinguish between gibberish and a cipher that you haven't got the ability to decrypt. A good cipher *should* have an output that looks like gibberish, because if it has patterns in it that might give the bad guy an opening to crack the code--e.g. a simple letter substitution cipher can't get away from the fact the most common letter in English is E, so whatever is the most common letter in the ciphertext is most likely going to also be E.

[halfeye]

Modern cryptography is very much better than old stuff. Even WW2 Enigma was much better than what went before.

IMHO the odds are this is just gibberish, ciphers weren't that good back in those days.

[gomipile]

Here is a relatively shallow, lightweight information-theoretic analysis of the manuscript. Based on the entropies of the text, compared to real languages:

1: It could be that the text is meaningless, i.e. there is no plain text language, and the anomalously low entropy is the result of whatever process was used to generate the strings of characters

2: If there is a plaintext that was encoded using a simple substitution, then this plaintext must have the same anomalously low entropy values. This then excludes most of the typical languages that might be assumed for a European MS of the 15th Century. In fact, no candidate plaintext language could yet be identified. Hawaiian, the one identified by Bennett, does not match for other reasons (as will become apparent in later pages). Some languages like Hebrew, the various Arabic languages, Persian, Armenian etc. have not yet been tested quantitatively, to my best knowledge.

3: If there is a plaintext in one of the known languages used in European MSs of the 15th Century, then this text must have been modified by some process changing the statistics quite drastically. This change is indeed so drastic that it is no longer possible to identify the plaintext language from the Voynich MS text, and any attempts of this nature will be invalid.

[No brains]

Whether real or a hoax, I wonder how relevant it will ever be? What can a curiously good guess at what a sunflower looks like do for me?

[Eldan]

I'm in favour of the ancient hoax theory, mainly for three reasons:

1) It is known to have been in the possession of a guy who had a career of selling fake alchemy
2) The emperor paid almost four pounds (not as the currency, as the weight) of gold for it.
3) So many cryptologists went over it and it seems to contain almost no information that even hints at it being some sort of actual code. At this point I'm pretty confident in accepting it's gibberish.

[Razade]

I'm in favour of the ancient hoax theory, mainly for three reasons:

1) It is known to have been in the possession of a guy who had a career of selling fake alchemy

As opposed to all that real alchemy respectable alchemists have gone about selling.

2) The emperor paid almost four pounds (not as the currency, as the weight) of gold for it.

This one seems strange to me. What does the price the thing was bought for matter in verifying if it's a legitimate thing or not? People were crushing up bones for Chinese medicine for years before we found out they were in fact some of the oldest known records of a once thought mythical Chinese Dynasty? The price paid or even the value other people attribute doesn't really say wheter it's real or not.

[shawnhcorey]

And the controversy continues.

Sorry, It Looks Like a Researcher Didn’t Just Crack the Voynich Manuscript After All

[Eldan]

As opposed to all that real alchemy respectable alchemists have gone about selling.

As opposed to texts written by actual alchemists who were convinced of what they were writing? Yes.

[BeerMug Paladin]

This one seems strange to me. What does the price the thing was bought for matter in verifying if it's a legitimate thing or not?

The higher the price, the more work a prospective hoaxer is likely to put into the hoax.

[Eldan]

Yeah. No one's going to write an entire book of nonsense if it's not going to pay well. A real alchemy book at least has uses.

[Cespenar]

Meh. Cryptology advanced by leaps and bounds from the middle ages, not to mention the astronomical difference between the computational powers at our disposal right now and back then. I don't believe there can be any middle ages code that couldn't be cracked by a professor and a few grad students within a couple weeks.

I personally think that the patterns that people find in it allude to how the original guy (the con man or whatnot) couldn't have written a perfectly random string on account of being a human.

[PopeLinus1]

All of you are wrong. Cueball's solved it.

[Razade]

The higher the price, the more work a prospective hoaxer is likely to put into the hoax.

Yeah. No one's going to write an entire book of nonsense if it's not going to pay well. A real alchemy book at least has uses.

Sure, both are fair points but we're not talking about the fraudster. The Emperor paid a price for it. Or didn't. There's no proof that 600 ducats were given over for the book. We're just told that it was.

Dr. Raphael, a tutor in the Bohemian language to Ferdinand III, then King of Bohemia, told me the said book belonged to the Emperor Rudolph and that he presented to the bearer who brought him the book 600 ducats. He believed the author was Roger Bacon, the Englishman. On this point I suspend judgement; it is your place to define for us what view we should take thereon, to whose favor and kindness I unreservedly commit myself and remain

This is from a letter written to the second for sure known owner of the book from the friend of the first person who owned it, after the first owner died.