Facsimile of the Voynich Manuscript Now Available to Citizen Cryptographers

If you are looking to get this as a Christmas gift, note that there are actually two versions of the Voynich Manuscript being published this year.<p>The one mentioned here is a photographic reproduction done by the Yale Press, and is available from major sellers like Amazon for a reasonable price: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0300217234" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0300217234</a><p>The other is a little more exotic. The Spanish publisher Siloé has been authorized to make a limited-edition &#x27;look and feel&#x27; replica. They will handmake 898 full facsimiles, down to the wormholes in the pages. The expected price is €7,000-8,000.<p>So if you are asking for a copy for Christmas, make sure to be be specific to avoid a (possibly) disappointing surprise!<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.siloe.es&#x2F;siloe-editara-la-replica-del-manuscrito-voynich&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.siloe.es&#x2F;siloe-editara-la-replica-del-manuscrito...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;21&#x2F;voynich-manuscript-exact-replicas-to-be-made-of-worlds-most-myst&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;21&#x2F;voynich-manuscrip...</a>

I&#x27;m not sure how a photo-print of the manuscript will help cryptographers. Doesn&#x27;t the digital version available at archive.org provide better opportunities for analysis?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;TheVoynichManuscript" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;TheVoynichManuscript</a><p>For example, a friend of mine is fascinated with the Zodiac Killer&#x27;s unsolved ciphers, so he put the note into a program, where you can replace the cryptic symbols in the serial killer&#x27;s note with various letters:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oranchak.com&#x2F;zodiac&#x2F;webtoy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oranchak.com&#x2F;zodiac&#x2F;webtoy&#x2F;</a><p>A printed-book of the Voynich Manuscript--to my mind--actually <i>reduces</i> the ability of cryptographers to decode it (if there&#x27;s even anything there to actually decode[1]). I would love to see the symbols in this book broken out into a font where we can run statistics on them, replace them with various letters from different alphabets, and seek patterns in their occurrence.<p>[1] An analysis of the manuscript found the distribution of words &quot; is not compatible with natural languages&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1601.07435" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1601.07435</a>

Maybe I don&#x27;t hang in the right circles, but has anyone done a serious look for number words? I can&#x27;t imagine that document would be void of quantities, especially in the recipes section.<p>Counting and enumeration systems can reveal a lot about where something is from.

I still haven&#x27;t heard of a better theory explaining Voynich Manuscript than this one: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;593&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;593&#x2F;</a>.

This is one of the most fascinating unsolved puzzles I&#x27;ve read about. I like to believe in the &quot;alien&quot; theory although it seems the least probable :)

What would the explanation be according to Occam&#x27;s razor here?

...So, anybody up for a game of Druids and Dicotyledons?<p>Yes, everyone else already linked the strip, but I couldn&#x27;t resist.