Re: VMs: The big shock

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jeff,

At 12:52 06/12/2003 +0000, Jeff wrote:
> The trouble is I know Glen has the answer but he doesn't know it yet. Also
> Strong had the answer.

Remember that Strong built his polyalphabetic hypothesis from the stats of 
only a few (was it really only two?) VMs pages (focusing most on f78r, 
IIRC). According to GC, Strong's magic number sequence 
(1.3.5.7.9.7.5.3.1.4.7.4) arose from various cribs suggested by previous 
researchers, but that Strong seems to have interpreted his own system 
somewhat freely when transcribing. Here's one of GC's pages containing 
Strong- and Askham-related material:-
        http://www.voynich.info/vgbt/Strong_files/

I also (probably like several others here) have scans of Strong's 1945 
worksheets on f78r (bet-01.gif ... bet-13.gif, etc), but can't seem to find 
these on the Internet to give a link to. Does anyone know if these are 
mirrored anywhere?

My personal opinion is that the link between "q" and "o" in "qo" is far too 
structured to match Strong's idea of a polyalphabetic cipher. In his 
decrypts, "qo" seems to come out differently each time... which doesn't 
work for me. When I look at the VMs, I see a *structured ciphertext* - but 
passing plaintext through anybody else's polyalphabetic cipher would give 
an *unstructured ciphertext*.

GC thinks that all this points towards the VMs' being a subtle & tricky 
16th century polyalpha of a simple plaintext - I think that this instead 
points to the VMs' being a misleading (but simple) 16th century cipher 
system of a complex plaintext. YMMV! :-)

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


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