Re: VMs: News and Replies

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Robert,

> Probably just my imagination, then. But if you look carefully, you can
> find the number-characters in order (except 4, which is why I used ?)
> starting from the 2 pm marker.

When I started looking at the VMS, I wondered:-
(a) for a thing with zodiacs in, where are all the astrological glyphs?
(b) for a thing with recipes in, where are all the numbers (quantities, etc)?

For (a), I still don't have a proper answer, except that I should say that 
I have in the past suspected EVA <dy> to (steganographically) code for 
Cancer. But as that may well have become disconnected under the final 
coding scheme adopted, don't get too excited about it. :-(

For (b), I have to say that it took me a year to start properly seeing the 
dain/daiin/daiiin and the cc/ccc characters as being some kind of 
steganographic Roman-numeral-based number system. But there are other (more 
shape-based) arguments to be made here about this.

I believe that the cipherbet (without "4") was designed specifically for 
the VMS, with the (slightly unusual) constraint that characters in the 
codestream needed to be appear on the page in any rotation and remain 
unambiguous.

I then think that the "4" character (which overwhelmingly appears in in its 
"4o" form) was a "hacked-on" later addition, probably by a different 
code-designer, to solve specific functional omissions from the code (ie, a 
missing letter or function) that had somehow got overlooked. I infer this 
because the "4" has such a radically different stroke-form from the others, 
that it seems likely to have been created by a different author.

Why is this relevant here? Because the "8" and "9" characters were most 
likely apparently appropriated *not* from Arabic numerals, but from 
Tironian shorthand fossilised in Latin writing of the 14th-15th Centuries. 
Certainly, the "9" is often used in a very similar way to how you'd expect 
to see it (at the beginning and end of words) - but whether this is 
deception (to fool us) or necessity (by dint of its structure) is another 
issue entirely. :-o

The "4"/"4o" pair, too, appears to have been used in a 1440 cipherbet from 
Urbino - but that too was apparently not inspired by Arabic numbers. But 
where did this modern-looking "4" shape come from? Yes, that's a good 
question (but permit me to leave it for another day).

In short: to my eyes, there is more immediate iconographic evidence that 
the code/cipherbet was devised *outside* of the Arabic numbering tradition 
than *inside* it - so be careful to understand that Arabic numbering in the 
underlying text is an assumption here, which I suspect may well be wrong.

BTW, this, too, points to a date of the cipherbet design of, say, 1470 or 
earlier.

IMWO, numbering is probably the key by which the VMS will be broken: 
understand how it numbers things (and if, as I believe, its code is an 
embellished number code of some sort) and you will probably understand the 
code.

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

PS: FWIW, I currently think that:
- most of the VMS' plaintext was in Italian, & the code was designed around 
that
- "4" probably codes for "z" (ie, a letter that got overlooked by the 
code-maker)
- "4o" probably means "number following this special symbol" - hence 
"qoteedy" etc

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