Voynich Manuscript/Research sessions/SES0D8CZNK07S90

Session 7: Phase 3: procedures, fragments, lists, transliteration; book v1.2

2026-10-22 · ledger S-004 · test · Kyle Prier, Claude (Anthropic)

A survey of fifteenth-century encoding procedures; per-scribe tests; six generators competing on held-out statistics; a fragmenting-cipher solver with controls; Latin list genres; the GC v101 transliteration check. Book v1.2 added Part VI.

Left open

A solver with nulls and multi-unit words (Tranchedino-type), validated on planted keys	Built in session 8 (element-vocabulary solver).
A mixed-unit simulator	Built in session 8.
A copying layer	Still open.
Homophone-choice dynamics per scribe	Tested in session 8 (T21); the instrument couldn't separate the cases.
Edge-MI decomposition; morphology induction	Morphology induction run in session 9 (Morfessor).

Questions raised

What procedure reproduces its statistics?

QST08JG6T5R6RRQ

Answers proposed

	Each scribe ran the procedure in his own way	ANS0D8FZYCY0BJC
	Results hold under every transliteration	ANS0D8FZYMR1X4H
	A list-like text: recipes, index, glossary	ANS0D8FZYWJ27TF
	A published mechanical procedure produced it	ANS0D8FZZ4C2TD3
	Each word is a fragment of a verbose cipher	ANS0D8FZZC67P7G

Evidence found

The hands are interchangeable in variant choice	EVD0D8GDPTP36PJ
No simulated procedure reproduces the statistics	EVD0D8GDQ2G7EGT
A verbose cipher also weakens word order	EVD0D8GDQAA46GK
Adjacent pages share vocabulary, as in languages	EVD0D8GDQJ46FS3
The fragmenting-cipher solver finds no key when each written word is one plaintext unit;…	EVD0D8GDQSY17GW
Latin list genres (recipes, indexes, glossaries) are more ordered and more formulaic than…	EVD0D8GDR1R1MWN
Every word-level result holds under the v101 transliteration; the glyph-entropy value…	EVD0D8GDR9J64TW

Runs

Per-scribe variant choice, transition profile and error typology: herbal B, scribes 2/3/5: variant-choice G (z vs page-shuffled null);… see note	RUN0D8EPR981AG9
Profile screen against 103 languages: statistics outside attested range see note	RUN0D8EPRH26TZ4
Entropy law and word-order gain: residual from the H1 vs entropy-rate law (word level), sd units outside 2 sd	RUN0D8EPRRW0QBA
Held-out context scaling (Kneser-Ney orders 1-8): held-out bits/glyph at order 1,2,4,6,8 see note	RUN0D8EPS0P7D1Q
Sequence structure: MI decay, compressibility, BPE curve, repeated phrases: repeated 4-grams real/shuffled see note	RUN0D8EPS8G6VTE
Null-glyph deletion: max h2 after deleting one glyph unit consistent	RUN0D8EPSGA1B68
Canonical-order (sorted anagram) test: share of words monotone under the best single ranking of units see note	RUN0D8EPT7R2JXG
Register by locus type (paragraph, label, ring, radial): q-initial share, paragraph minus ring, within page hypothesis not supported (ring text is label-like)	RUN0D8EPTFJ223Q
Periodicity, transposition and isomorph battery: period-bigram peak (period, count) in text vs within-word shuffle see note	RUN0D8EPTQC0J28
Periodicity, transposition and isomorph battery: coincidence between consecutive lines at same position see note	RUN0D8EPTZ62D6Q
Periodicity, transposition and isomorph battery: glyph-disjoint isomorph pairs at same line position / anywhere see note	RUN0D8EPV706VSW
Generator competition on a held-out fingerprint battery: nearest generator to the manuscript in standardised held-out space see note	RUN0D8EPVET6244
Generator competition on a held-out fingerprint battery: held-out statistics failed per generator (\|z\|>2) see note	RUN0D8EPVPM7T4F
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): planted affix-table cipher of Latin, k=4, 1 letter(s)/word: held-out… control fails	RUN0D8EPVYE3NAY
List-genre comparison (Latin Library texts): order gain (bits/word) of six Latin list-genre texts vs the… see note	RUN0D8EPW684HZ6
Generator competition on a held-out fingerprint battery: nearest generator to the manuscript in standardised held-out space see note	RUN0D8EPWE20XPZ
Generator competition on a held-out fingerprint battery: held-out statistics failed per generator (\|z\|>2) see note	RUN0D8EPWNW56PD
List-genre comparison (Latin Library texts): order gain (bits/word) of six Latin list-genre texts vs the… see note	RUN0D8EPWXP4FNS
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): planted affix-table cipher of Latin, k=4, 1 letter(s)/word: held-out… control fails	RUN0D8EPX5G0P03
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): planted affix-table cipher of Latin, k=4, 2 letter(s)/word: held-out… control fails	RUN0D8EPXDA2RAA
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): planted affix-table cipher of Latin.novowel, k=4, 1 letter(s)/word:… control fails	RUN0D8EPXN42D49
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): planted affix-table cipher of Latin, k=4, 2 letter(s)/word: held-out… control fails	RUN0D8EPXWY35G1
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): paragraphs, Latin: held-out gap (own minus decoded), segments 927,… see note	RUN0D8EPY4R28MN
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): planted affix-table cipher of Latin, k=4, 1 letter(s)/word: held-out… control fails	RUN0D8EPYCJ677E
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): planted affix-table cipher of Latin, k=4, 2 letter(s)/word: held-out… control fails	RUN0D8EPYMC37HR
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): planted affix-table cipher of Latin.novowel, k=4, 1 letter(s)/word:… control fails	RUN0D8EPYW61HBC
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): paragraphs, Latin: held-out gap (own minus decoded), segments 927,… see note	RUN0D8EPZ405AP6
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): paragraphs, Latin.novowel: held-out gap (own minus decoded), segments… see note	RUN0D8EPZBT71SN
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): paragraphs, Italian: held-out gap (own minus decoded), segments 953,… see note	RUN0D8EPZKM5DD4
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): rings, Latin: held-out gap (own minus decoded), segments 159, 2.06… see note	RUN0D8EPZVE0MD2
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key): rings, Latin.novowel: held-out gap (own minus decoded), segments 133,… see note	RUN0D8EQ0382T37

Methods used

Profile screen against 103 languages	MTH08JFX79E1JSQ
Sequence structure: MI decay, compressibility, BPE curve, repeated phrases	MTH08JFX80W51QQ
Register by locus type (paragraph, label, ring, radial)	MTH08JFX9044RZM
Null-glyph deletion	MTH08JFX97Y19ZK
Canonical-order (sorted anagram) test	MTH08JFX9FR7TJ7
Periodicity, transposition and isomorph battery	MTH08JFX9QJ1JD6
Entropy law and word-order gain	MTH08JFX9ZC4HW8
Held-out context scaling (Kneser-Ney orders 1-8)	MTH08JFXA767X5C
Per-scribe variant choice, transition profile and error typology	MTH08JFXAPT5N59
Generator competition on a held-out fingerprint battery	MTH08JFXAYM4J2X
Fragmenting-cipher solver (joint segmentation and key)	MTH08JFXB6E57AB
List-genre comparison (Latin Library texts)	MTH08JFXBE87Y91

Datasets used

Zandbergen-Landini transliteration ZL3b (EVA, IVTFF 2.0, 13 May 2025)	DAT08JFZFSR41PZ
Glen Claston v101 transliteration GC2a (25 June 2025)	DAT08JFZGH65XJY

Sources consulted

Some important new statistical findings	SRC08JHQAX84PKW
How many glyphs and how many scribes? Digital paleography and the Voynich manuscript	SRC08JHRPVG4Z28
The linguistics of the Voynich manuscript	SRC08JHTHEG6MSY
Keywords and co-occurrence patterns in the Voynich manuscript: an information-theoretic analysis	SRC08JHX9B03EPJ
An elegant hoax? A possible solution to the Voynich manuscript	SRC08JHY6MG0DDD
The Voynich manuscript: evidence of the hoax hypothesis	SRC08JHYN983ECB
A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript	SRC08JHZ3Y07R9B
The Naibbe cipher: a substitution cipher that encrypts Latin and Italian as Voynich manuscript-like ciphertext	SRC08JHZJJR0Z8T
The Solution of the Zodiac Killer's 340-Character Cipher	SRC08JJ5ZN87Z8V
A Glyph Is Not a Letter, a Token Is Not a Word, a Space Is Not a Space	SRC08JJ6EA05YRN
Polygraphia III: The Cipher that Pretends to Be an Artificial Language	SRC08JJ7BKG0H6E
Gibberish after All? Voynichese Is Statistically Similar to Human-Produced Samples of Meaningless Text	SRC08JJ7T885G0C
How the Voynich Manuscript Was Created	SRC08JJ88X07VNB
Hoaxing Statistical Features of the Voynich Manuscript	SRC08JJ8QHR0A6R
Fifteenth Century Cryptography	SRC08JJ966G0ZFQ
Regule ad extrahendum litteras zifferatas sine exemplo	SRC08JJAJ4R2FW9
Venetian Cryptanalysis Treatises of the Renaissance	SRC0D8MQ7PT1ACG
Enciphered after all? Word-level Text Metrics are Compatible with some Types of Encipherment	SRC0D8MQ8P22Y9G
Fingerprinting Gibberish: A Quantitative Comparison of the Voynich and Sloane MS 3188	SRC0D8MQ95P58T6
Lost Manuscripts and Extinct Texts: A Dynamic Model of Cultural Transmission	SRC0D8MQAMJ410R
On the transmission of texts: written cultures as complex systems	SRC0D8MQAWC72FF
The Elements of Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography	SRC0D8MQB4622XF
De subtilitate	SRC0D8MQBC02PHV
The frontier of simulation-based inference	SRC0D8MQJY62F46
abc: an R package for Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC)	SRC0D8MQKDT7EJK
Voynich Paleography	SRC0D8MQMWP3A6Q
De furtivis literarum notis	SRC0D8MQPKC5YTC
Voynich Reconsidered: scribes and languages	SRC0D8MQSRY0MKE
Schwarzweisse Magie: Der Schlüssel zum dritten Buch der Steganographia des Trithemius	SRC0D8MQTR646WX
Demystifying the Scribes behind the Voynich Manuscript using Computational Linguistic Techniques	SRC0D8MQVQE6D3K
Rightward and Downward Grapheme Distributions in the Voynich Manuscript	SRC0D8MQVZ82ECA
voynich: code and data for Gibberish after all?	SRC0D8MQZME0ZXM
GLTR: Statistical Detection and Visualization of Generated Text	SRC0D8MQZW87P83
From exemplar to copy: the scribal appropriation of a Hadewijch manuscript computationally explored	SRC0D8MR5ZJ1EGK
Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins	SRC0D8MR67C1D2Y
Deciphering a Letter from the French Wars of Religion	SRC0D8MRQJ27YCK
Historical Language Models in Cryptanalysis: Case Studies on English and German	SRC0D8MS40G7G4P
DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection using Probability Curvature	SRC0D8MS66T3HHW
Error	SRC0D8MSDS025S7
New paper: Fifteenth Century Cryptography Revisited	SRC0D8MSG7458A3
What mistakes did Scribe 2 never make?	SRC0D8MSGPR7H6K
Solved: The Ciphers in Book III of Trithemius's Steganographia	SRC0D8MSQHG5NH7
Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature	SRC0D8MSR1442GM
Lack of confidence in approximate Bayesian computation model choice	SRC0D8MSRRJ07K2
Hoaxing the Voynich Manuscript, part 7: Producing the text	SRC0D8MSTQ232M0
Has Gordon Rugg solved the mystery of the Voynich manuscript text? (part 1)	SRC0D8MSW5Y5PQ0
Has Gordon Rugg solved the mystery of the Voynich manuscript text? (part 2)	SRC0D8MSWDR3B3V
Substitution Cipher Based on The Voynich Manuscript	SRC0D8MSX567NRN
Review of The linguistics of the Voynich manuscript by Claire Bowern and Luke Lindemann	SRC0D8MT8MC1TY9
Naibbe cipher paper	SRC0D8MTFF40C2Q
Letter counting: a stem cell for Cryptology, Quantitative Linguistics, and Statistics	SRC0D8MTKC47G75
Some types of scribal error in manuscripts of Pindar	SRC0D8MTKKY1FVD
Voynich MS - Analysis - Sentences etc	SRC0D8MTQ1A1J17
A new Transliteration Alphabet brings new Evidence of Word Structure and Multiple "languages" in the Voynich Manuscript	SRC0D8MTR8C6A9M

What it produced

Reading Without a Key	SRC0D8NJAWT22V4
Survey: table-driven encoding procedures, 1380-1520, and process identification	SRC0D8NJCKG5DMJ

The session's log

Date: 2026-10-22

Survey: table-driven encoding procedures 1380–1520 (Lavinde, Mantua 1401, Tranchedino, Simonetta, Alberti, Trithemius), Naibbe mechanics and failures, no-plaintext generators, scribal-error typology, process identification (REPORT_procedure_fingerprinting.md).
T14 per-scribe tests (variant choice, bigram profile, near-twin substitutions vs page-shuffled null): hands interchangeable within herbal B.
T15 generator competition: six simulators writing into the real layout, fitted on four statistics, scored on twelve held-out ones; shared battery (battery.py) with two new statistics (edge-glyph MI, line-initial divergence); languages laid out as pages for reference. Fingerprint grid figure.
T16 fragmenting-cipher solver (fragment_solver.py): lexicon of all frequent 1–8-unit strings, beam re-segmentation under the key, key fit by annealing with lam = 2 and a polishing sweep (added to homophonic.py). Controls: one unit per word passes (81% / 87%), two units per word fails (5%). Manuscript: no key; dictionary-coverage scorer at permutation level.
T17 list genres (Latin Library texts): more ordered and more formulaic than prose; manuscript unlike all.
T18 transliteration: GC2a (v101) fetched; VOY_TRANSLIT switch; battery re-run; word-level results hold, symbol-level h2 moves to 2.53.
Ch. 23 searches re-run with lam = 2 (homophonic_voynich3.csv). Order-gain statistic corrected to random word ids; all book numbers updated (0.42 vs ≥1.34).
Book: Part VI (ch. 25–28), Appendix E (24 hypotheses), Appendix F updated, four new figures, table 26.1; 162 pp. Scripts made path-independent in the delivery.
Open: solver with nulls and multi-unit words (Tranchedino-type), validated on planted keys of that shape; mixed-unit simulator; copying layer; homophone-choice dynamics per scribe; edge-MI decomposition; morphology induction.