Research session · Voynich Manuscript

Session 8: Phase 4: the chancery key; book v1.3

Tranchedino-type mixed keys, the cipher family of fifteenth-century Italian chanceries, registered with four predictions, then simulated over 216 configurations; collapse, choice and line-position tests; an element-vocabulary solver with a planted-key ladder; Simonetta's 1474 rules. Book v1.3 added Part VII.

Session 822 Oct 2026Test0

What it left open

{'fate': 'Open (next step N-001).', 'text': 'The layout layer: model and normalise line-conditioned variants, then re-run'}
{'fate': 'Still open.', 'text': 'A copying layer'}
{'fate': 'Still open.', 'text': 'A solver that can find glyph-string signs'}
{'fate': 'Still open.', 'text': 'A more topical plaintext for the locality bound'}

Questions raised 2

Can any of it be read?

Q-040

QST

Does any reading survive held-out pages?

Q-041

QST

Answers proposed 1

Latin or Italian under a chancery mixed key

H-CIPHER-MIXED

ANS

Evidence found 7

A mixed key whose signs are glyph strings cannot be recovered by the element solver even…

F-034

EVD

Endings are more concentrated than Italian's

F-033

EVD

Glyph order carries usable structure

F-035

EVD

Merging context-alike spelling variants does not restore word order; the collapse and…

F-036

EVD

No Tranchedino-type mixed key reproduces the text

F-031

EVD

No word of the running text has been rendered as a dictionary word of any language on…

F-037

EVD

Spelling variants depend on the word's place in the line

F-032

EVD

Runs 27

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: held-out element score, real minus spelling-permuted null…

RUN-081

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-071

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-079

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-078

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-077

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-076

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-075

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-074

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-070

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-068

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-067

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-066

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-065

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-064

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-060

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-059

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-058

RUN

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder: planted mixed key on Latin: held-out word accuracy / key accuracy by…

RUN-057

RUN

Homophone-choice dynamics and layout-blindness of variant choice: conditional MI of variant and line position within frames vs…

RUN-063

RUN

Homophone-choice dynamics and layout-blindness of variant choice: conditional MI of variant and line position within frames, plaintext…

RUN-069

RUN

Homophone-choice dynamics and layout-blindness of variant choice: same-variant rate of successive family occurrences within page,…

RUN-080

RUN

Homophone-choice dynamics and layout-blindness of variant choice: same-variant rate of successive family occurrences within page,…

RUN-056

RUN

Homophone-choice dynamics and layout-blindness of variant choice: variant choice vs line position and previous glyph, top alternation…

RUN-062

RUN

Mixed-key simulator: family map and fitted fingerprint: held-out statistics failed by the fitted mixed key, per spacing…

RUN-073

RUN

Sign-level collapse at matched vocabulary: change in word-order gain after merging 300 context-similar edit-1…

RUN-055

RUN

Sign-level collapse at matched vocabulary: mean excess of context-chosen over random merges at equal type count:…

RUN-061

RUN

Simonetta's 1474 rules: Simonetta 1474 diagnostics: word-final units above 1% / share of five…

RUN-072

RUN

Methods used 5

Element-vocabulary solver for mixed keys, with unit discovery and planted-key ladder

M-T22

MTH

Homophone-choice dynamics and layout-blindness of variant choice

M-T21

MTH

Mixed-key simulator: family map and fitted fingerprint

M-T19

MTH

Sign-level collapse at matched vocabulary

M-T20

MTH

Simonetta's 1474 rules

M-T23

MTH

Datasets used 1

Zandbergen-Landini transliteration ZL3b (EVA, IVTFF 2.0, 13 May 2025)

DAT

Sources consulted 40

A Florentine 'polyalphabetic' cipher in the 15th century

SRC

A Glyph Is Not a Letter, a Token Is Not a Word, a Space Is Not a Space

SRC

An Algorithmic Solution of Sequential Homophonic Ciphers

SRC

Antonio Elio 'Cipher' and his Polyphonic-Syllabic Cipher

SRC

Archive Proximity

SRC

Armand de Bourbon’s Poly-Homophonic Cipher – 1649

SRC

Automatic Key Structure Extraction

SRC

Ciphers of Mary, Queen of Scots

SRC

Cryptanalysis of Homophonic Substitution Ciphers Using Simulated Annealing with Fixed Temperature

SRC

DECODE: database of historical ciphers and keys

SRC

Deciphering Historical Syllabic Ciphers

SRC

Deciphering Mary Stuart's Lost Letters from 1578–1584

SRC

Deciphering a Letter from the French Wars of Religion

SRC

Die Geheimschrift im Dienste der päpstlichen Kurie von ihren Anfängen bis zum Ende des XVI. Jahrhunderts

SRC

Efficient Cryptanalysis of Homophonic Substitution Ciphers

SRC

Encryption (Sforza envoy ciphers)

SRC

Fifteenth Century Cryptography

SRC

Francesco Tranchedino: Diplomatische Geheimschriften (facsimile of Vienna, ÖNB Cod. 2398)

SRC

How multi-character substitution might explain the voynich’s strange entropy

SRC

Key Design in the Early Modern Era in Europe

SRC

La diplomazia sforzesca nella seconda metà del Quattrocento e i suoi cifrari segreti

SRC

Mark Knowles' theories of pharma and other labels

SRC

Milanese enciphered letters, call for help…

SRC

New paper: Fifteenth Century Cryptography Revisited

SRC

Regule ad extrahendum litteras zifferatas sine exemplo

SRC

Segmenting Numerical Substitution Ciphers

SRC

Solving Historical Dictionary Codes with a Neural Language Model

SRC

Substitution Cipher Based on The Voynich Manuscript

SRC

Supporting Historical Cryptology: The Decrypt Pipeline

SRC

The Curse of the Voynich: The Secret History of the World's Most Mysterious Manuscript

SRC

The Naibbe cipher: a substitution cipher that encrypts Latin and Italian as Voynich manuscript-like ciphertext

SRC

The Solution of the Zodiac Killer's 340-Character Cipher

SRC

Un'ottima applicazione quattrocentesca del sistema cifrante monoalfabetico

SRC

Venetian Cryptanalysis Treatises of the Renaissance

SRC

Voynich Averlino hypothesis summary

SRC

Voynich MS - what we learn from entropy

SRC

What Encryption Errors Can Reveal: Cross-Cipher Errors in Mary Queen of Scots’ Letters

SRC

What Was Encoded in Historical Cipher Keys in the Early Modern Era?

SRC

Wrong Design of Cipher Keys: Analysis of Historical Cipher Keys From the Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg Used in the Thirty Years’ War

SRC

€400 Reward

SRC

What it produced 2

Reading Without a Key

SRC

Survey: fifteenth-century Italian mixed keys and how they were broken

SRC

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). Session 8: Phase 4: the chancery key; book v1.3 [Research session SES0D8DV4G06NE7]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/SES0D8DV4G06NE7

@misc{mysteriesdept_ses0d8dv4g06ne7,
  title     = {Session 8: Phase 4: the chancery key; book v1.3},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Research session, catalog key SES0D8DV4G06NE7},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/SES0D8DV4G06NE7}
}