VMs: Re: possible solution

["Jeff" <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gordon Rugg g.rugg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
09 December 2003 11:33


> Dear All,
> 
> You might be interested to know that it's possible to replicate most of
> the
> qualitative and quantitative features of Voynichese by using a modified
> Cardan
> grille in combination with text generation tables. My article on this
> will be
> published in Cryptologia in January 2004. In brief, the tables contain
> syllables
> along the lines postulated by Stolfi; the grille contains enough slots
> to show
> one "word" at a time. There are restrictions on the patterns of slots in
> the
> grille, and these restrictions interact with regularities in the table
> layout to
> produce different frequencies of combinations (including restrictions on
> 
> co-occurrence of otherwise common syllables or characters). This
> produces text
> which shows most of the features of Voynichese; the values for Letter
> Serial
> Correlation are different, but that's probably because my original
> tables were
> not sufficiently structured. I'm working on this now with colleagues.
> 
> The use of a modified Cardan grille suggests a date after 1550. This
> method is
> well suited to producing meaningless gibberish for a hoax, and provides
> suggestive evidence that the VMS could have been hoaxed, probably by
> Kelly. It
> is possible to adapt this method for reversible encryption, but the
> linguistic
> features of the VMS suggest that this was not done in the VMS using the
> methods
> that I identified. Again, this is described in my Cryptologia article.
> 
> I've issued a press release about this and put up some material on the
> Web,
> since the story looked likely to break before the article was published.
> Both
> the release and the Web material are somewhat simplified because of
> space
> constraints (in the press release) and not wishing to pre-publish large
> chunks
> of my Cryptologia article (in the web site), so my apologies to group
> members
> for any apparent distortions as a result. What I argue in the
> Cryptologia
> article is that the hoax hypothesis now looks like a feasible
> explanation (if
> the LSC scores turn out to be replicable, which appears likely).
> 
> My website is at: http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/staff/g.rugg/voynich/
> 
> The sample text on the website doesn't show all the features of
> Voynichese for various reasons (mainly logistical). The Cryptologia
> article demonstrates how the remaining features can be implemented. One
> of my students is working on a software version of the table and grille
> method, which will make it a lot easier to produce text in a
> machine-readable format; we'll post the results for the group to analyse
> once this is done.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Gordon
> 

And I know where Kelly got the tables (GRIN.) If it is a hoax by him.


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