Evidence · Voynich Manuscript

Normalising does not let a homophonic key through

Normalising the line-edge spellings does not help a homophonic key transfer: the best held-out gap stays at 0.32 nats a character (raw 0.34; a planted key gives 0.02).

EstablishedObservationConfirmatory0

What it means

Key questionWhat kind of text is it?

Most likely: a notation or memory system

Most likelyunchanged

Answer this evidence bears onLatin or a vernacular under a table cipher

Counts againstweighs little · 6 for, 8 against

Still possibleunchanged

Next steps 5

ACH sensitivity without a second rater: drop each finding in turn and shift each diagnosticity one step, and report which rankings move. A blinded rating by an independent model run, clearly labelled as such, can stand in until a person rates.

~4 h

On: What kind of text is it?

—not judged

Add human-made meaningless text (the Gaskell and Bowern 2022 samples) as a null text in the battery and the signature tests.

~6 h

On: What kind of text is it?

—not judged

Second rater for every evidence link, then ACH sensitivity (drop each finding, compare raters).

~6 h

On: What kind of text is it?

—not judged

Paradigm classes against slot simulators with held-out stem-ending prediction (F-103).

~12 h

On: What kind of text is it?

—not judged

Ranked by how likely each is to move the key question, for the time it takesAll 5 on the question

How it was found 1 run

Homophonic solver with planted-key controls and permutation null: homophonic solver on the normalised text: held-out gap (own minus…

Method Homophonic solver with planted-key controls and permutation null · Session 10

28 Oct

Homophonic solver on the normalised text: held-out gap (own minus decoded, nats/char), five configurationsLatin.novowel slots spaces=True: 0.32 (raw 0.34); Latin slots spaces=True: 1.65 (raw 1.77); Italian slots spaces=True: 1.73 (raw 2.04); Latin slots spaces=False: 0.71 (raw 0.69); German slots spaces=True: 2.13 (raw 2.16)Not supported (no key transfers)

ZL3b transcription Line-edge rules learned on half E (46 minimal alternations at paragraph start, line start and line end)Parallel Bible corpus, 103 languages, equal-length samples plus vowel-less forms (Christodoulopoulos & Steedman 2015)

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). Normalising does not let a homophonic key through [Evidence EVD0DCC14A87RYJ]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DCC14A87RYJ

@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0dcc14a87ryj,
  title     = {Normalising does not let a homophonic key through},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DCC14A87RYJ},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DCC14A87RYJ}
}