Re: Back to basics - or musings of an old bore

[Karl Kluge <kckluge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stolfi wrote:

> If the codebook hypothesis is correct, then it is no wonder that all
> methods that were designed to crack alphabetic substitution schemes
> have failed so far.  

As someone who has spent a great deal of time playing with sed and grep
while staring at Biological B as well as running the Herbal A and 
Biological B "vocabularies" through regular language induction algorithms,
I am very sensitive to the issue of the structure of "words" in the Mss.

On the other hand,

1) It would be a cruel prank of nature indeed if the numerical similarity
of h1 and h2 between the Mss and Genesis in English enciphered with a
verbose cipher based on Tiltman's prefixes and suffixes were mere coincidence,
and

2) The writing appears too fluid to be something as clunky as a codebook.
The scribes were relatively fluent (to different degrees) in writing text
in whatever system was involved.

I really wish we knew more about what Manly had in mind when he said the
Mss was in  "a comparatively simple cipher disguised by extensive use of 
nulls." The next time someone is at Yale it would be useful if they'd look
at this 20 Mar 1920 letter to Mrs. Voynich.

Karl