Re: Voynich letters

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Unsurprisingly, I've been looking carefully at the astrological pages, 
trying to extend my analysis to work out the other 11 signs in f67r (given 
Pisces, there should only be two possible rotational orders for the signs 
of the zodica).

A couple of quick observations about the VMS text in general:
(1) words frequently start with { o + gallows } or with { y + gallows }
(2) though { c + gallows + h } appear a lot, many long sections have none 
at all

Possible explanations:
(1)  { y + gallows } at the start of a word could be equivalent to { c + 
gallows + h }
(2)  { o + gallows } could mean "use letter & change state", { gallows } 
means "use letter"

These parallel mechanisms would allow some latitude in the way that 
encoding proceeded: and hence might help explain statistical differences 
between sections and/or Currier languages. There might also be stylistic 
reasons why the { c + gallows + h } form may be inappropriate for labels 
and/or carefully laid-out diagrams (they might be too tall to both fit and 
still remain readable).

Regardless, these simple tactics would also do much to frustrate our search 
for unambiguous statistical signatures. They would also help lower the 
entropy towards the level observed.

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....