Run · Voynich Manuscript

T41 generation 2: lattice EM under the NPE Herbal A setting (400-word nomenclator, vowels dropped); control passes the coverage bar spuriously, manuscript fails the null

Lattice EM decipherment: sign boundaries and key learned together, with a structure-preserving null: Held-out dictionary coverage (bar 0.7 x true plaintext's); manuscript gate: coverage(manuscript) - coverage(null) > coverage(control) - coverage(null), and key-permutation p < 0.01.

Fails. The control clears the coverage bar by 0.002 while recovering 2 % of the key: with a 400-word nomenclator the decoder scores coverage by emitting Latin nomenclator words (the null decodes include 'piperligusticumcoriandrum', Apicius' recipe words), and the nulls, whose plaintexts have 7-8 % coverage, decode to 24-27 %. The manuscript decodes below the null and no better than permuted keys. Nothing is read.control 0.250 (bar 0.248; key accuracy 0.022, character similarity 0.099); pseudo-Latin nulls 0.236 and 0.270 (their own plaintexts 0.079, 0.074); Herbal A held-out 0.214, permuted keys mean 0.216, p 0.5450

Result

Run	Measured	Result	Against	Decision	Date
Run	Held-out dictionary coverage (bar 0.7 x true plaintext's); manuscript gate: coverage(manuscript) - coverage(null) > coverage(control) - coverage(null), and key-permutation p < 0.01	control 0.250 (bar 0.248; key accuracy 0.022, character similarity 0.099); pseudo-Latin nulls 0.236 and 0.270 (their own plaintexts 0.079, 0.074); Herbal A held-out 0.214, permuted keys mean 0.216, p 0.545	Control's margin over the null: 0.250 - 0.253 = -0.003	Fails. The control clears the coverage bar by 0.002 while recovering 2 % of the key: with a 400-word nomenclator the decoder scores coverage by emitting Latin nomenclator words (the null decodes include 'piperligusticumcoriandrum', Apicius' recipe words), and the nulls, whose plaintexts have 7-8 % coverage, decode to 24-27 %. The manuscript decodes below the null and no better than permuted keys. Nothing is read.

What it used and found

Lattice EM decipherment: sign boundaries and key learned together, with a structure-preserving null

Method

MTH

Herbal A and Herbal B paragraph text: training and held-out pages

Dataset

DAT

Latin genre texts

Dataset

DAT

Naibbe cipher tables and example plaintexts (greshko/naibbe-cipher, commit 719f2f4c)

Dataset

DAT

ZL3b transcription

Dataset

DAT

Latin as a re-spaced homophonic stream (period practices)

Answer it tests

ANS

Parameters

pw = 0.1, alpha = 0.05, elements = 420, restarts = 10, settings = {'K': 400, 'h_c': 4, 'h_v': 1, 'lam': 0.25, 'Ssyl': 0, 'abbrev': 0, 'p_copy': 0.05, 'p_stay': 0.98, 'window': 20, 'novowel': 1, 'p_break': 0.9, 'spacing': 'stream', 'simplify': 1, 'positional': 0}, permutations = 10, em_iterations = 40

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). T41 generation 2: lattice EM under the NPE Herbal A setting (400-word nomenclator, vowels dropped); control passes the coverage bar spuriously, manuscript fails the null [Run RUN0DCGGHJX8C9X]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/RUN0DCGGHJX8C9X

@misc{mysteriesdept_run0dcgghjx8c9x,
  title     = {T41 generation 2: lattice EM under the NPE Herbal A setting (400-word nomenclator, vowels dropped); control passes the coverage bar spuriously, manuscript fails the null},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Run, catalog key RUN0DCGGHJX8C9X},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/RUN0DCGGHJX8C9X}
}