Voynich statistics, and why Voynichese is not flat…

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You might think I’d be pleased by the appearance of another Voynich statistics study (Voynich Manuscript: word vectors and t-SNE visualization of some patterns), courtesy of those well-known peer-reviewed online journals Reddit and Hacker News. [*] After all, statistical experiments are – if carefully planned and executed – beyond all reproach, surely?

But there is a big problem (arguably a meta-problem) with this: and it’s one that’s been around for a very long time.

Even back in 1962, Elizebeth Friedman – having been a top US Government code-breaker for several decades – was able to note that all attempts to decrypt the Voynich Manuscript as if it were a simple language or single-substitution alphabet were “doomed to utter frustration”. That is, if you wind the clock back half a century from the present day, it was already clear then that Voynichese’s curious lack of flatness was strongly incompatible with:
* natural languages
* exotic languages
* lost languages
* monoalphabetic (simple) substitution ciphers, and even
* straightforward hoaxes

Unfortunately, the primary assumption of flatness is precisely the starting point of a large number of statistical studies carried out on the Voynichese text ever since.

Why Is Voynichese Not Flat?

A long succession of (actually pretty good) past statistical studies has revealed that Voynichese has an abundance of mechanisms that give it internal structure, not only in terms of letter adjacency and within words generally, but also within lines, paragraphs, and pages. Yet while all natural languages do work to plenty of orthographic rules, none of them (from this far back in time, at least) has orthographic conventions that extend so far into the high-level page layout.

In Voynichese, you can see these “supra-orthographic structures” in such places as:
* Horizontal Neal sequences (stereotypically manifesting themselves as pairs of single-leg gallows placed about two-thirds of the way along the topmost line of a paragraph or page
* Vertical Neal sequences (the first letter of each of a series of adjacent lines, forming a putative column of letters, and very probably distorting the agrregate statistics for the first character of each line)
* Vertical free-standing key-like sequences
* Substantial difference in word structure within “labels” (short pieces of free-floating text, typically inside or beside drawn features)
* Grove “titles” (small fragments of right-justified text tagged onto the end of paragraphs, e.g. on f1r)
* Small text_size:dictionary_size ratio
* Multiple repetitions of high frequency words (daiin daiin, qotedy qotedy, etc), etc

[Just about the only supra-word-level orthographic structure we can directly match is the change in frequency stats for the last letter of a line. In natural languages, we often see a hyphen placed there, while in Voynichese we often see EVA ‘m’ or ‘am’: so I would be unsurprised if these are essentially the same thing.]

Each of these features (which I’ve discussed in more detail elsewhere on this site) on its own would be annoying enough to account for, if (say) you were trying to reconcile Voynichese with a conventional language. However, put them all together and you suddenly get a glimpse of what we’re really dealing with here: something arbitrary, painfully complex, and extremely unlanguage-like.

If, as per almost all natural languages and ciphertexts, Voynichese did not have these features, we would happily describe it as “flat”, and it would be utterly fair and reasonable for people to throw their home-grown statistical toolkits at it in the reasonable expectation that something might just emerge from the process.

However, Voynichese is not flat: and so this kind of simple-minded approach is 99.9% certain to reveal nothing of any genuine novelty or insight. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

So, What’s The Answer, Nick?

If you want to do statistical analysis on the Voynich Manuscript that genuinely stands a chance of producing insightful and helpful results, you really need to put the Voynichese text through some kind of normalization filter before analysing it: by which I mean you need to condition the worst parts out.

The best starting point is to restrict your scope to one of the two large relatively homogeneous blocks of text:
* Quire 13 (but without labels, and without vertical sequences) – though note there is a long-unresolved suggestion that Q13 may have originally been composed in two parts / phases, not coincident with the final binding order
* Quire 20 (but without f116v) – though note there is also a long-unresolved suggestion that Q20 may have originally been composed in two parts / phases, and also not coincident with the final binding order.

Doing this should sidestep the thorny issues (a) of Currier A vs Currier B, (b) of text vs labels, and (c) of space transposition ciphers (because I don’t recall Q13 and Q20 having and “oro ror”-like sequences). [Personally, Q20 would be my preferred starting point.]

I would also strongly advise filtering out any matched pairs of single-leg gallows that fall on any single line, along with the (usually shortish) text sequence that sits between them: and any ornate gallows too.

All of which leaves the tricky issue of how best to normalize page-initial, paragraph-initial, and line-initial letters. The jury is still well and truly out on these: which probably means that evaluating them would be a good use of statistical analysis. Which also probably means that nobody is going to actually do it. 🙁

Finally: once you have got that far, all you’re left with is… the truly humungous issue of how best to parse Voynichese. Is EVA ‘ckh’ one letter, two letters, or three? Should EVA ‘qa-‘ and ‘qe-‘ always be interpreted as if they are copying errors for EVA ‘qo-‘? Should each of EVA ‘or’ / ‘ol’ / ‘ar’ / ‘al’ be read as a pair of letters or a single (tricky) verbose cipher glyph? Does ‘ok’ encipher a different token to ‘k’? Is ‘yk’ two letters or one composite one? And so forth… the list goes on (and it’s a very long list).

But unless you can find a way to see clearly past Voynichese’s supra-orthography, you’ll probably never get even remotely close to anything that interesting with your own Voynich statistics. Just so you know! 😐

[*] Tongue planted firmly and immovably in cheek.

Thomas Leonard Keane and the Somerton Man…

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Pete Bowes has had some comments left on his Somerton Man blog by a certain ‘Margaret Hookham’ (which, trivia fans, was actually Dame Margot Fonteyn’s real name).

In these web-weary days we live in, the default position with posters claiming to drip-feed intriguingly new Somerton Man information is that they should be considered trolls until they can prove otherwise (which has yet to ever happen, as far as I can tell)… or until they provide sufficient disproof that their research is for real. In this case, “Margaret” asserts that “ASIO records show D.D.Thomson was in Adelaide on the night of the 30th November 1948“: which sounds highly unlikely to me, given that ASIO wasn’t actually formed until 1949. Which – as starts go – is far from the best.

All the same, what intrigued me was that – despite the thick layer of apparent trollery – there was also a glimmer of genuine historical interest to be had from her comments, though probably not in the way that was intended.

Specifically: I’m interested neither by her primary claim (which involves the disappearance of Vasily Sherbakov and Miss Bogotyreva from the November 1948 LAPSTONE conference, Jessica Harkness, pregnancy, bla bla bla) nor indeed by her secondary claim (Russian spies, Australian spies, Alf Boxall, Prosper Thomson, cover story, bla bla bla), but rather by her tertiary claim: which is that Prosper Thomson, D.D.Thomson [who she says was Alf Boxall’s boss, and maybe he was, who knows?] and a man called Thomas Leonard Keane were all at the 115th Australian General Hospital (6th RAAF Hospital) in Heidelberg in 1943.

115th Australian General Hospital

heidelberg-patient

Source: Australian War Memorial

It’s certainly true that Prosper Thomson was there (albeit briefly) in 1943. According to his military records (digitized online at the NAA), on 28/6/1943 he was transferred from Prince Henry Hospital to “115AgH” , but discharged two weeks later on 10/7/1943.

Moreover, it’s certainly also true that a soldier called Thomas Leonard Keane was (according to his military records) working there in 1943, presumably as a nursing orderly. And so: given that we have been looking for a “T. Keane”, and that these two men may well have met in the relatively compact setting of Heidelberg Military Hospital, it would seem to be a good idea for us to ask…

Who Was Thomas Leonard Keane?

During WWII, Keane entered the Australian military twice: firstly, in 1939 where he gave his occupation as “Dispatch Clerk”, but lied about his age, claiming that he had been born in Newport, Victoria on 6th November 1905. Having been assigned to the 2/2nd Field Regiment, he was put onto the “X list” (which listed those members of a unit who were absent, typically for medical reasons), asked to be released for “Family Reasons” (not apparently specified in the documents) and was discharged in April 1940 (discharge certificate 13139). His April 1941 application for a General Service Badge was turned down because his discharge wasn’t on actual medical grounds.

His second entry into the Army was in September 1941, where he was assigned to the 115th Australian General Hospital at Heidelberg, but this time giving his date of birth as 6th November 1898. He also gave his job as “Railway Clerk”, and listed his primary school as “St Josephs, Newport” (it was blank in his first application).

Why did he lie about his age? There’s no obvious clue, but I have a suspicion that he had served in WWI and – for some reason – wanted to avoid having that record examined. There’s a link here, service number 33556: whether this was him is no doubt something Cipher Mysteries readers will be able to determine much more easily and quickly than I could.

Finally, we know the second date of birth Keane gave is correct, because we also know when he died: 13th November 1973.

thomas-leonard-keane-gravestone

(Courtesy of BillionGraves).

Clearly, he couldn’t have been the Somerton Man. But I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Keane worked as a Nursing Orderly in 115AGH, and served outside Australia for 138 days (in Japan from 11th March 1947 to 26th July 1947), before being discharged on 8th June 1948.

Japan in 1947

This 1998 letter from Captain Barbara Ann Probyn-Smith, RAANC,(Retd), paints an all-too-vivid picture of what was going on Japan at that time.

The Japanese people had many endemic diseases in their bodies, to which we had no immunity. They included TB, HTLV-1, Japanese B Encephalitis (one epidemic in 1948 killed over 3,000) and Haemorraghic Fever.

Up the hill, behind the Kure Hospital, and opposite and above our quarters was a very sordid town, with no washing facilities, no running water, where the Japanese grew fruit and vegetables in fields manured with human excreta. A terrible smell always emanated from it. It had no sewage. They dug open trenches into which they emptied their “honey buckets” of human excreta, before it was taken to the gardens for growing fruit and vegetables. Although there were wooden covers over the trenches, there were many large cracks between the boards, permitting the entry of flies and other vermin.

If I have read his forms right, Kure Hospital was where Keane travelled to on the Manovia.

And What Of The Somerton Man?

We can see Keane’s signature and handwriting many times on the military forms:

thomas-leonard-keane-signatures

Which, of course, we can compare with the writing on the tie in the suitcase:

t-keane-tie

Is it a match? Possibly, possibly not: the K looks like a plausible match, while the T rather less so. All the same, it’s nice to have them next to each other.

So is that the end of it? Have we driven our Holden all the way to the end of yet another Somerton Man cul-de-sac?

Well… not quite. Thomas Leonard Keane for me is emblematic of what was happening in Australia after WWII: though he had avoided front-line action, his months at the hospital in Japan must have been harrowing in a very different way. And the situation he presumably found himself in mid-to-late 1948 was surely not hugely dissimilar to that of the Somerton Man, as forensically told by his body at the time – fit, well-groomed, yet not necessarily fitting in to post-war society. They were not the same person, sure, but they may well have been “brothers in plough-shares“, or fellow-travellers in some way.

The Suitcase, Once More?

An unwritten assumption of most Somerton Man research is that the suitcase (left at Adelaide’s Railway Station) was only the Somerton Man’s. Yet even though this is a straightforward notion apparently full of common sense, it isn’t entirely as strong as you might think. It contained (if I recall correctly) clothes and shoes of different sizes: a mish-mash.

What I’m getting at here is that there’s a hypothesis that hasn’t really been considered: that the suitcase might have had more than one person’s belongings in. Might it have had some borrowed clothes, perhaps borrowed from an ally (Keane lived in the Reservoir suburb of Melbourne, and there was a good train into Adelaide from there that morning) rather than a friend? Might that person have lent his suitcase and some of his own clothes to a sick, destitute acquaintance as a short-term favour?

And then – upon the Somerton Man’s death – might the original owner of the suitcase have decided to deny all knowledge? After all, what kind of a person really wants to get themselves tangled up with a messy business like that? “Smile and wave, boys, smile and wave”, as a famous military leader put it. Would you have raised your hand?

Oh, And One Last Thing…

Finally, the last page of Thomas Leonard Keane’s file has a surprise for us all: a small sealed folder with the following stamp on it:

do-not-open

What information could a former nursing orderly at Heidelberg possibly have that would require being reclassified as secret until 2028?

Plenty of room for conspiracy theories, sure: but what are the odds that it gets a further thirty years of secrecy added to it even then?

Nick Pelling Fortean Voynich talk in London, 25th February 2016

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I’ve been persuaded by the lovely people at the London Fortean Society to give a talk next month (25th February 2016, Bell pub in Petticoat Lane The Pipeline, 94 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EZ, 7.30pm for an 8pm start, £4/£2 concs) on the weird (and occasionally wonderful) Voynich Manuscript.

If you haven’t been to an LFS event before, they start about 8pm with a “Fortmanteau” (a Fortean news round-up), followed by the main speaker for most of an hour. Then, after a 20-minute break, there’s a Q&A, finishing at 10-ish, optionally followed by a drink and a chat at the bar. As normal, I’m expecting to be assailed with questions on just about every cipher mystery going: which should be excellent fun. If any Cipher Mysteries readers plan to come along, please let me know!

If you don’t already know about Charles Fort, then shame on you! (Only kidding!) Fort liked to collect reports of phenomena that the science of his day couldn’t account for, which he edited and published in 1919 as The Book of the Damned: as a result, “Fortean” has become a useful adjective to hang onto anomalous data which sit uncomfortably with the so-called wisdom of the day. Hence “The Fortean Times”.

Is the Voynich Manuscript Fortean? For many people, it is: they would argue that scientific and historical investigations have so far revealed little of genuine interest or certainty, and that all the while it remains unreadable / uncrackable it is an anomalous artefact.

Yet for historians, this “Fortean Voynich” notion is perhaps something of a misdirection: there are plenty of old objects the smartest historians out there can as yet make no sense of – but does that necessarily mean that they are anomalous? Instead, might they simply be under-studied?

For the moment, though, perhaps there is truth enough in both camps: and that, as Charles Fort said, there is “…nothing, in religion, science, or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while“. 🙂

I hope to see some of you there: and here’s the blurb I put forward for the LFS’s next flyer:

The Blurb

The 500-year-old Voynich Manuscript is renowned as “the world’s most mysterious manuscript”, as well as “the Everest of historical code-breaking”. With 200+ pages of unfathomable text, strange circular diagrams, and numerous drawings of impossible plants and tiny naked women, some consider it beguiling: others think it totally mad.

But the harder we strive to find explanations for the Voynich’s countless oddities, it seems the less we know. Is it insanely brilliant, or brilliantly insane? Even after a century of study, nobody can be sure. The only category it truly fits is Charles Fort’s “Damned Data” – phenomena for which science cannot comfortably account.

As a result, there is a plethora of Voynich theories, across a reassuringly Fortean panorama that ranges from conspiracies to lost South American civilizations to time-travelling aliens. Might one of them be right? Or are we doomed to spin round in circles, forever unable to make sense of this most intellectually cursed of artefacts?

Nick Pelling, a Voynich Manuscript researcher for more than a decade, will guide us through its wobbly history, unknown science and mad theories, and will happily answer any question we have on unsolved historical ciphers.

Franciscan monasteries in Switzerland 1450-1610…

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Back in 2012, I got (briefly) excited by the hypothesis that the marginalia on f116v of the Voynich Manuscript might well have been added in the library of a monastery not too far from Lake Constance, inbetween Switzerland and Southern Germany (and not too far from Rudolf II’s Imperial Court at Prague, where the manuscript appears to have ended up).

And then a few days later I got excited all over again by the follow-on hypothesis that this Swiss library may have been part of a Franciscan monastery. If the “bearer” who brought the Voynich Manuscript to Rudolf’s court (and to whom Rudolf paid the wondrous sum of 400 ducats) was himself/herself a Franciscan friar/nun, that might help explain its attribution to Franciscan monk Roger Bacon.

It’s a plausible story, sure, though not necessarily a highly probable one for the moment. But all the same, this might possibly give us a good idea for a brand new kind of haystack to rake through…

Franciscan Monasteries in Switzerland

St. Francis famously exhorted his followers to study in ways whereby “the spirit of prayer and devotion was not extinguished”: which makes it likely that just about every Franciscan monastery and friary we could consider would contain a library of some sort.

Indeed, some Swiss Franciscan monasteries had very famous libraries: Schaffhausen had a chained library (“Kettenbibliothek”, if you want to search for “Kettenbuch” in German). Here’s what the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana later looked like (a little later) with all its chained books:

chained library

Chaining books actually freed them, by making them available to more people to study: so it’s entirely possible that the Voynich Manuscript had a chained wooden cover for part of its pre-Rudolfine life. Here’s what an individual Kettenbuch from 1484 looks like:-

kettenbuch-cropped

The Schaffhausen Ministerialbibliothek was (if I translate the nice German account of it here correctly) formed in 1540, manuscripts mainly from the Benedictine Allerheiligen (All Saints) monastery library, but also “eight manuscripts and six incunabula” from the Franciscan chained library (formed in 1509). Books (such as Erasmus’ Omnia Opera) were added from 1540 onwards.

How do we know this? Because of a library catalogue (“Chronik der Stadt und Landschaft Schaffhausen”) prepared by Johann Jakob Rüeger (1548-1606) in 1589, then updated in 1596, and apparently printed in 1884-1892 (it seems to have been partially converted into a database on ancestry.com, but I’m don’t have a subscription to that). You can see many individual pages in the extract of a modern book here (with a fair bit on the Schaffhausen Franciscan library on pp.45-47).

Here are some other Swiss Franciscan monasteries that had libraries:

* Fribourg Monastery. According to this page (with links to 13 digital copies of mss from there):-

The library contains about 35,000 volumes, 10,000 of which date from before 1900. The majority of the books can be accessed via a card catalog. The old library can be traced back to Guardian Friedrich von Amberg; 18 of his volumes have been preserved. During the monastery’s golden age in the 15th century, the superiors collected mainly sermon and study literature. The Franciscan Monastery was able to preserve its library on site; it contains 80 medieval and 100 post-medieval volumes of manuscripts (not catalogued), as well as 136 incunabula and 80 post-incunabula.

* Lindau island had a convent of the Third Order of St Francis: this survived the Protestant Reformation by converting to Protestantism.
* Konstanz
* Bellinzona
* Bremgarten (Aargau)
* Königfelden Abbey
* Wesemlin, Lucerne (has the Provinzarchiv der Schweizer Kapuziner, though presumably this was slightly later?)

…and doubtless a fair few others besides.

Clearly, this looks like it could be a substantial set of haystacks to be going through to find a single Voynichian needle. Is there anything out there that can help us?

A Swiss Needle Magnet?

It seems that there might be, in the form of the three-volume Handbuch der Historischen Buchbestände in der Schweitz that lists numerous ancient Swiss libraries, many of which have descriptions of historic catalogues of those libraries.

* Volume #1: Aargau Canton to Jura Canton
* Volume #2: “>Lucerne Canton to Thurgau Canton
* Volume #3: Uri Canton to Zürich Canton

Unfortunately, only volume #2 of this is currently online (I think, but please correct me if I’m wrong!); and many collections that might reasonably be listed are (according to the German Wikipedia page) absent. Moreover, lots of the interesting stuff is in journals such as Helvetia Franciscana that are not currently online, e.g.

* Schweizer, Christian: Kapuziner-Bibliotheken in der Deutschschweiz und Romandie–Bibliothekslandschaften eines Reform-Bettelordens seit dem 16. Jahrhundert in der Schweiz nördlich der Alpen. In: Helvetia Franciscana 30/1 (2001), S.63
* Mayer, Beda: Der Grundstock der Bibliothek des Klosters Wesemlin. In: Helvetia Franciscana 7 (1958), S.189
* Mayer, Bea: Kapuzinerkloster Freiburg, In: Die Kapuzinerklöster Vorderösterreichs. In: Helvetia Franciscana 12, 7. Heft (1976), S. 207-216.

…along with other journals such as Librarium which (thankfully) have been placed online, e.g.

* Kronenberger, Hildegard: Das Kapuzinerkloster Wesemlin in Luzern und seine Bibliothek. In: Librarium 9 (1966), S.2

And the bigger problem is this: because the Voynich Manuscript had without much doubt left its (probably monastic) library by (say) 1613 or so, what we actually would like is a list of pre-1613 Swiss Franciscan monastic inventories to have a look at, based on the small (but likely non-zero) likelihood that one of them might well list a reference to a book resembling the Voynich Manuscript. Yet this was (I think) not at all the challenge the Handbuch der Historischen Buchbestände in der Schweitz was set up to meet at all.

But… are there any of those old inventories from Franciscan monasteries still in existence all? Personally, my head’s still spinning from trying to take in all this stuff, to the point that I’m still a very long way from being able to tell. But perhaps Cipher Mysteries readers will fare better than me (even one would be nice)… good luck!

The Voynich battle is only just beginning…

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Contrary to what some Voynich people like to assert, the point of History is really not to allow a thousand speculative flowers to bloom. Rather, the idea is to work so closely with the available evidence that we can cull bad theories inconsistent with it. So for the Voynich Manuscript, where pseudohistorical theories run amok (typically blindfolded, and with a Japanese carving knife in each hand), the Voynich battle is only just beginning.

What I’m trying to say is this: because History is primarily the study of what actually happened, it is by nature a cruelly eliminative mistress – its heart is one of disproof, and that’s OK. Yet in the case of the Voynich Manuscript, the ongoing absence of incontestable evidence (let alone “smoking gun” proofs) has meant that her machete has rarely been employed in the Voynichian garden. By this measure, I’d say that there has been little done to date that would be worthy of the title “Voynich History” (understanding its post-Rudolfine provenance has, though often fascinating, so far been more of an exercise in historiography than in actual History).

Sorry, people, but this is going to have to change.

Radiocarbon Dating? *shrug*

You might reasonably have thought that the 2009 University of Arizona radiocarbon dating of the Voynich Manuscript’s vellum (to 1404-1438 with 95% statistical confidence) should surely have brought some kind of veridicality to the whole arena. Yet it has apparently achieved nothing: Rich SantaColoma merely shrugs forwards (asserting that if the vellum was used one or more centuries after it was manufactured, who cares? So what?), while Diane O’Donovan merely shrugs backwards (asserting that the date of its actual writing-down-ness is meaningless; and given that the origins of its contents ‘clearly’ lie centuries if not millennia earlier, who cares? So what?).

These two are good examples of the rampant denialism that currently passes for normality in the Voynich world. So, have any Voynich theories been modified as a result of the radiocarbon dating? My guess is that so far no, probably not even one has.

As for me: even though I have a technical criticism of one of the test’s four samples (the apparently-earliest radiocarbon dating sample was taken from one of the most contaminated parts of the manuscript, I strongly suspect affecting the very consistent results yielded by the other three), I’m far from a critic of radiocarbon dating. If we broaden slightly to the wider dating range implied by the three most consistent samples alone, that range does sit comfortably with other solid dating evidences I have pointed to over the last decade.

So I don’t see the radiocarbon dating as inherently problematic (beyond a technical quibble over its claimed precision). Yet it has made not a ripple: why?

“I Am Your Father”? Riiiight…

In the mixed up world of Voynich research, even though there is no “mainstream” central account of the Voynich Manuscript and its 15th century origins, people such as Rich SantaColoma and Diane O’Donovan invest much of their efforts into kicking back against figures they perceive as representing that mainstream (usually either me or Rene Zandbergen, whose fact-centred Voynich website I have nothing but praise for).

Darth-Vader

A lot of the time this comes across as a kind of rage against the Evil Empire: as if Rene Zandbergen and I are Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, darkly paternalistic forces looming over them all, conspiring against their Rebel Alliance’s plucky fight for historical freedom of expression. I guess this would also paint Rich and Diane as Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, twin mystery researchers mysteriously separated at birth, but fighting on the same side: I doubt I’m even close to being the first person to note this.

But really: me? I’m certainly not their father, and I’m definitely not the mainstream. All I’ve done for the last fifteen-odd years is to try to date tiny features of the Voynich Manuscript by isolating them and locating them within their individual micro-histories. All of which has been worthy but boringly mundane; and about as far from constructing some kind of theory-zapping epistemological Death Star as you can get.

[Yes, I did put forward a theory about one possible author back in 2006: but if I had found other candidates that matched the dating evidence even half as well I’d have written about them too. All the dating evidence remains.]

The Voynich Mainstream

Whether or not it suits Voynich denialists, the things that actually form the Voynich mainstream are those historical dating observations that chime most solidly with the (I would suggest slightly wider-range) radiocarbon dating. This is because radiocarbon dating is almost never used in isolation: it is at its strongest when carefully combined with other kind of dating evidence. In the case of the Voynich Manuscript:

* The presence of 15th century marginalia in the zodiac section (the “zodiac hand”) suggests a latest date of 1500
* The presence of 15th century number forms in the quire numbers suggests a latest date of 1500
* The transitionary numbering style used for the quire numbers suggests a latest date of 1500
* The presence of parallel hatching suggests a earliest dating in Germany from 1425, in Florence from 1440, in Venice from 1450 or later: and a latest dating of about 1480 / 1490 everywhere
* The presence of Islamic-influenced geometric designs on the albarelli-like “barrels” in the zodiac section suggest a date range of 1450-1475
* The dot pattern on some of the ‘pharma’ glassware (i.e. f89r1 and f89r2) is strongly reminiscent of post-1450 Murano glass decoration, and (to the best of my knowledge) is found nowhere else until significantly later
* The baths in the balneo quire suggest a dating of not later than 1500, because that was when baths sharply fell from fashion in Europe because of their [incorrect, but persuasive] association with syphilis (Klebs, 1916)

So the Voynich mainstream is not so much a set of paternalistic individual theorists for the denialists to kick back against, but rather a constellation of specific ideas that point to dating ranges consistent with the radiocarbon dating. The reason I’m forever in the Voynich denialist firing line is that I happened to latch onto much of this group of ideas a number of years before the radiocarbon dating was carried out, and gave many of them an airing in my 2006 book.

Of course, based on what has happened over the last decade, nobody in Voynich Land will accept any of this from me without more evidence turning up. But regardless of whether I’m alive or dead or flying my TIE Advanced x1 through space, the ideas that make up the Voynich mainstream are now what they are.

Yet what kind of an Intellectual Historian would want to take any of this Voynich battle on board? Or has the Voynich Manuscript gone beyond the point where there is any real hope of its being reclaimed by mainstream historians as a genuinely interesting artefact?

Tracking down the Klondyke Company…

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Google now has me thoroughly confused. I’ve been trying to track down Captain Russell, presumably arriving in Port Louis in Mauritius in 1926 with a load of technical sensing equipment on a boat from Liverpool, and staying in Vacoas on behalf of the “Klondyke Company”, and hiring lots of local hands to dig a huge-sounding crater: and am getting nowhere fast.

And then all of a sudden I find three independent Dutch newspaper sources from 1926, and a German-language South American newspaper source from 1929. But Google then seems to keep arbitrarily deciding whether or not to include these in searches: it’s all very confusing.

Anyway, I don’t *think* these four articles tell us anything new, but please feel free to have a look yourself:

* Goessche Courant, 16th April 1926, p.3
* De Harderwijker, 16th April 1926, p.2
* De Gazet van Poperinghe, 2nd May 1926, page 1
* Der Kompass, 4th March 1929, page 1

I also found a short article (in Gallica) from L’Echo d’Alger 25th April 1926 that said:

Le trésor de chevalier Nageon

UNE SOCIETE ANONYME ANGLAISE LE RECHERCHE… VAINEMENT !

Londres, 24 avril. – On poursuit activement des recherches méthodiques dand l’île Maurice afin de retrouver un trésor que le chevalier de Nageon, le célèbre corsaire français, y aurait caché en 1780 et 1800, et qui contient, parait-il, des diamants, des perles et des doublons d’Espagne, pour un total de trente millions de livres sterling.

Depuis une cinquantaine d’années en tente, de temps en temps, de découvrir ce fameux trésor ens basant sur certaines instructions fournies par les descendants du corsaire. Mais les investigations n’ont été reprises sérieusement, dit-on, que depuis que l’on a trouvé un plan topographique établi par le chevalier lui-même.

On a constitué depuis lors une société anonyme, et l’an dernier on fit venir de Liverpool à l’île Maurice le capitaine Russell, qui se fait fort de déceler la présence de masses métalliques sous le sol.

Or, le capitaine Russell a signalé ls présence d’une masse de métal ensevelie à une grande profondeur et l’on creuse fébrilement à l’endroit désigné par lui pour mettre au jour le merveilleux trésor. Le malheur veut que des inflitrations d’eau gênent kes travaux et que l’on soit constamment obligé d’interrompre ceux-ci pout recourir aux pompes.

Ces jours derniers l’émotion fut grande lorsque l’on annonĉa que l’heure de la découverte était proche. On fit, en hàte, venir des camions automobiles et des sacs tout neufs où devaient être empilés les beaux doublons d’Espagne. Des brigades de détectives armés accompoagnaient le convoi.

Mais, hélas ! ce ne fut qu’une fausse alerte.

All true. 🙁

Anyway, it’s as if there’s an entire layer of documents just below where I’m looking at (and out of sight). Who went digging for this treasure in 1880, and what had the (anonymous) Klondyke Company got that made Captain Russell so optimistic? Who were the (unnamed) shareholders in the Klondyke Company? Why were its shares traded in Rupees? When did they finally throw in the towel?

This touched so many people’s lives (though probably mostly for the worse, it has to be said), there must be echoes of it in countless places. Surely?

More generally, does anyone known what the tools are for tracking defunct companies from nearly a century ago? Is there a great big ledger somewhere in an archival basement in London I can stick my nose into and have a look?

I’m going to try to separate La Buse posts from Le Butin posts…

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When I look at all the different cipher mysteries, the main thing I want to achieve with them is a certain level of clarity. Solving them would be a huge bonus (given that most are from so long ago, the Muses of History have no obligation to furnish us with enough evidence to do that), but getting to the stage where I can talk clear-headedly about each one in turn would be a good starting point.

Yet the air around many unsolved ciphers is horribly clouded by the fog of acquired mythology. For example, it seems to me that treasure hunters since the year dot have gone out of their way to weave whatever optimistic stories they can from the single-strand threads of available evidence, often with the aim of convincing both themselves and other people to invest in their next treasure hunting wheeze, whether that may be digging for the gold and diamonds of La Buse (the pirate Olivier Levasseur), tracking down the hidden treasure caches of Le Butin (Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang), or whatever. And this constant upcycling of fragmentary evidence has left us with a tangled mesh of things that may or may not be true, and/or that may or may not be connected.

Le Butin means 'The Booty'

In the two cases of La Buse and Le Butin, though, I simply fail to see any specific way they are connected beyond treasure hunter X, Y, or Z asserting loudly that they are. They’re both improbable Indian Ocean pirate yarns that are close to impossible to verify individually, for sure: but inferring from this similarity that they must therefore somehow be connected could only really be a travesty of logical deduction.

Hence from now on, I’m going to try to separate La Buse posts from Le Butin posts: even though treasure hunters have long tried to argue that the two are somehow connected, I just don’t see it at all. Even Charles de la Roncière’s 1934 book doesn’t mention Nageon de l’Estang whatsoever, even though a pirate treasure hunting expedition from Liverpool to Vacoa had made international news in 1926, just a few years before.

Le Butin’s “Doubloons & Diamonds”

For the record, here’s a copy of the 1926 ‘Le Butin’ news story courtesy of Trove. I have, however, been entirely unsuccessful in my attempts to determine the actual identity of “Captain Russell” or the “Klondyke Company” formed to retrieve Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang’s various treasure caches, despite the long series of very specific details mentioned. Can any Cipher Mysteries do better? 🙂

Brisbane Telegraph, 5th June 1926, p.18

Doubloons & Diamonds

Hunt for 30 Millions

Venture in Mauritius

Privateers’ treasure, diamonds, and pearls and Spanish doubloons, valued at anything up to thirty millions sterling; such is the object of a systematic and scientific search which, unknown to the outside world, has been in progress in the island of Mauritius for 12 months (writes the Port Louis Correspondent of the “Daily News”).

The presence beneath the soil of some mysterious and undefined mass of metal has been “sensed” by means of an electrical instrument sent out specially by a Liverpool firm; but the nature of this find has yet to be discovered, although a crater has now been excavated to a depth of 54 feet.

Motor lorries were brought up, laden with bags in which to carry it away, and the approach to the excavations was guarded by armed police. But nothing happened.

Despite this and other disappointments, however, the greatest optimism is expressed by Captain Russell, who, as the representative of the Liverpool firm already mentioned, is directing the operations in person.

I understand that his optimism was reflected in a cable which he despatched to his firm.

The scene of the search is a spot known as Klondyke, on the west coast of Mauritius, in the Black River district, and the treasure, which has come to be spoken of as the Klondyke treasure, is believed to havo been secreted there between 1780 and 1800 by the Chevalier de Nageon, a noted privateer.

It has to be borne in mind that in the latter part of the 18th century Mauritius, or, as it was then called, the Ile de France, was a nest of the French privateers, mostly Bretons, who harried commerce in the Indian Ocean.

A number of attempts have been made, at intervals since 1880, to find the treasure, and excavations were made in accordance with instructions sent to a Mauritian from one of his relatives in Brittany.

Then the Chevalier de Nageon’s own plan was said to have been found, and a company was formed to begin regular diggings.

Some stonework and other clues tallying with the plan were brought to light from time to time, but nothing else happened, and the shares of the Klondyke Company — held by about a score of persons — became temporarily valueless.

But by the end of last December these shares were selling at 5000 rupees (about £375) each. This was because Captain Russell had come across new indications which gave rise to the highest hopes.

Captain Russell landed here almost exactly a year ago, as the sequel to correspondence between the Klondyke Company and the firm he represents, whose advertisement in an English review, of a metal-divining instrument, had led to their being consulted by the shareholders.

It is understood that the firm, having made certain inquiries of its own, was sufficiently impressed to enter into an agreement whereby it undertakes the excavation at its own cost, and, in the event of success, has the right to 50 per cent, of the treasure.

Captain Russell, whose headquarters are at Vacoa, brought with him all the necessary instruments, and digging was promptly started on a large, and costly scale.

There are tunnels lighted by electricity, and a special sewage system has been installed to drain away underground water.

The presence of water is one of the great difficulties, for when a crater 85 feet deep had been dug, infiltration from an irrigation reservoir nearly put an end to the whole process.

A high power pump was then brought into play, and the crater has now been dug out for a further 20 feet or so.

It is estimated that the Work has already involved an outlay of nearly £12,000. A large number of hands is employed.

There are plenty of sceptics, of course, for though there is no doubt that Mauritius was repeatedly used as a cache for the loot of privateers and pirates, it is hardly to be supposed that these sea rovers all failed to remove their booty later.

But Captain Russell remains cheerful. He believes that the Klondyke treasure will be discovered.

In any case he is positive regarding this one fact: that his instrument has registered, and continues to register, the presence of a mass of metal underground. and he will not desist until he has found out what the metal is.

Not only do the promoters of the Klondyke treasure-hunt share his cheerfulness, but the native diggers, as I hear, are feverishly excited concerning yet another treasure, supposed to have been hidden by the same Chevalier de Nageon at Pointe Vacoa, Grand Port.

Fabulous figures are mentioned in this latest story, but for the present it seems prudent to concentrate on Klondyke’s “thirty millions” alone.

The Book of Soyga, now translated and online…

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The story of how two remaining copies of the Book of Soyga (one owned by John Dee) were uncovered in 1994 by Deborah Harkness has become fairly well known – I covered it here back in 2008. Dee had pondered greatly over the book’s mysterious tables (though apparently without success, if we take his diaries at face value), and had even copied eight of them into his own books.

Yet it was historical cryptologer Jim Reeds who finally intuited the formulae and algorithm by which the tables were numerically generated from a keyword. Here’s a nice recent picture of him from Klaus Schmeh and focus.de:

wissen-Soyga-Raetsel

Reeds’ paper John Dee and the Magic Tables in the Book of Soyga revealed the (actually quite straightforward) secrets of these tables, and tried to put them into context of the Christian Cabalistic tradition that was evolving around that time, as evidenced by the broadly similar tables in the books by Trithemius and Agrippa (and later by Thomas Harriot, though to a much lesser degree).

Nowadays, though, you can even go to a webpage that will happily generate a Soyga-style table from your own keyword, with the algorithm worked out by Reeds implemented by a tiny bit of nondescript-looking JavaScript magic.

Yet: “since there is as yet no edition or translation of either of the two manuscripts for [Reeds] to refer to, nor even a synopsis of their contents…” [p.3], he was forced to briefly describe the broader contents of the Book of Soyga in his paper: that it was “concerned with astrology and demonology, with long lists of conjunctions, lunar mansions, names and genealogies of angels, and invocations, not much different from those found, say, in pseudo-Agrippa“, and that it “makes numerous references to what are presumably mediaeval magical treatises, works such as liber E, liber Os, liber dignus, liber Sipal [i.e. ‘Liber Lapis’], liber Munob [i.e. ‘Liber Bonum’], and the like.” [p.4]

However, that has now changed. The Aldaraia sive Soyga vocor (edited and Translated by Jane Kupin) has now appeared on the web: and a good little transcription and translation it is too.

There are indeed mentions of a Book B, Book E, Book F, two Books called G [Geber and Genitor], Book H, Book L (Liber Lapis), Book Os [Bone Book], Book P, Book Q, Book X, and even (Rosicrucians look away now) a Book M. For those interested in sequences which may or may not be cryptographic, there are a number of curious unexplained sequences, such as this one in Section 8:

Anat, cethaz, cora, simam, nertac, lenas, pertac, Thenas, acu, vuspoc, sco ceth, barcam, haran, telib, Machim, miraf, suef, mumchae, mobaaa, darum, Navano, damarcus, fortunatus, curiatus, malfatus, Adraanus, azalicus, nisram, minran, nabur, amarfari, Iafac

Or this, from Section 15:

Adar, Tanar Narchi, Tottoz, Zolc,
Iage, Batgne, Teren, Tolia, Iatti,
Mibrar, Zethde, Oyue, Soctero, Chin,
Tero, Thele, Elet, Bertaltalgyalge, Genorc[?],
Torre, Oirdea, Vinda, Tonocge, Spari,
Taxe, Taxde, Teneraz, Danze, Iore,
Nubriato, Totzepe, Papaper, Pranaria, Dacterrolian,
Aceczezolizoa […]

And from Section 16:

Iiz, fee, yaa, axa, vut, voo, soi, iee, eeq, eaa, pau, unn, oom, on, lic, eke, aah, auu, guo. ofo, iid, iee, cea, aba

And from Section 17:

Zazelz, Ellaicgalpe, Gumge, Aic, Suce, Scende […]

Section 18 has a long section linking astrological planets and their positions with obscure-looking syllables, in something approaching a weird name-generative way. (Don’t ask me to summarize further, it’s a bit of a mess).

Oddly, Section 19 for a brief while seems to be describing Homer Simpson: “And baldness will afflict the upper part of his head. He will be affected by yellow bile and easily distracted by love.” And so forth. 🙂

There are a whole load of odd names in section 26.6, too many to list here: there is also a list – “Icz, iee, Yoa, Axa, Urit, Noo, Soi, Eeg, Eaa, Pau, Una, On, Lie, Elie, Aah, Aroi, Guo, Rid, Ree, Eea, Alba” – which seems to have been mutually miscopied from the same list in Section 16.

Finally, the Liber Radiorum (Book of Rays) section of the Book of Soyga finishes with a description of the various 36×36 tables, which only (as far as I can see) serves to make them more obscure. In the Bodley manuscript, it then finishes: “Here ends the Book of Rays taken from the first Venetian example by Venetiis according to Parisiis“, which is just about as close to citing its sources as it ever gets.

Might there be more cryptography hidden in the Book of Soyga’s odd sequences? It’s possible, but I have to say many of the sequences look exactly to me like the kind of copied demonological lists that were utterly commonplace at the time. (If you think the Internet is bad for lists, that’s got nothing on medieval grimoires).

If there’s any cryptographic meat yet to be picked off the bones here, I’d guess it’s just making sense of the descriptions of the tables at the end of the Liber Radiorum section. But at least, unlike Jim Reeds, you now have an excellent source to be working from. 🙂

Two new Voynich Limericks

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A nice set of past Voynich limericks are elsewhere on Cipher Mysteries, but I thought (six years on) I’d write a couple of new ones for you:

Might Voynichese be Nahuatl?
Or incomprehensible prattle?
We might never find
How this thing was designed
Without patronage from Seattle.

The Voynich Manuscript’s a conundrum
One that draws us away from the humdrum
It defies those who attack it
But have faith – you’ll soon crack it
Illegitimi non carborundum! 🙂

Didac Sánchez and the WW2 Cipher Pigeon…

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Here in the UK, it all started with a story in 27th August 2015’s Daily Telegraph:-

Didac Sánchez, a 22-year-old Spanish IT entrepreneur, says he has deciphered Second World War message following a three-year effort at a cost of €1.5 million (£1.1m) – but won’t reveal its message.

Didac Sanchez

Sánchez claims he told GCHQ of the message’s contents: but GCHQ (of course) denies all knowledge of it.

Now, I have to admit that this is quite a different angle from the media’s usual cipher mystery-related tosh. But what’s in it for Sánchez? Ah, the Telegraph went on to say:

He [Sánchez] now plans to market new security software based on the code, a system he has christened 4YEO (For Your Eyes Only) and which will allow any text, document, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS or Skype conversation to be encrypted, as well as telephone calls.

And A Didac Sánchez Cryptogram Too…

And – mirabile dictu – Sánchez’s clever people have posted up a challenge cryptogram supposedly generated using 4YEO’s software, offering a bounty of 25,000 euros to the first person who can crack its “indecipherable” secrets before, errrm, 31st December 2015:

GDNFP IUALI ZOANN EEING DUORL IELTE ROMSO EVCIS AIFON NBNTN IEPSR LAAAT JELAE IMIRN RSNEP IADIA NIATD DPVRO RURLU UAELP RLASR AAOSQ PDSOY EMINL RIDLN NSIEA AEULA AFSTO DIIUF RRRCG EEZIS BAXTI MMORI ORANO FHDER DCNNT NRADA ETAER CDNIO EEAIO EROMT TUDVI AOCDS RHSEU RLALQ CCOCC MIEON NRNIT TOESF OAAMN ANTAO OICEJ TOSBD DEPIR OIANE AOZUE ECCCN IAEIS REECI IRNUR IATCE FSEUC EIENC ROASP COPSU LNUTI VOUES RACCR SYNCA MROIU TLJOB UVSOO JIRLE SSETU TNNOT ASRNE IOBCU NALEU OMEER GINOU AAETL STHER ONLAR ROTIE LENDR AEEYO TRSBR TDRTE HETRR ICUEL TRDCE ASNND TUCOD MDUJA OESPL RESEG OMOCL TAMTI IEGLM AAERR RRSEN SIBAI EICDL RILCE LOXES ELUEO CTANP TNRYU XGGTA NSTIO DSADC CDEER EODNA SAALS CCZEE EENRE LAOOR VASHA SLEAJ CAITE HRTER ELNIA GNTEL DSAAN EOFTD NURAD OSACE MDICR IOACT NEERO OATCA IRPAO NISMD SVECT NLYLT TETNS HSACL NETNL PGIEU EEEDL DCTSR PÑMDM ATUED OOSTS YERCD TRCAO ANAIE EPSNR ZMMCI RIDIL RIAGD IOMRI SAEAN VOLEE TBEOR OEEEA SEOEA EERAO OLSLM EAERO ZUHVU ALEEM EONIA AOEEZ CEEON NNESO ANBMI DLFDP LEIIS LQCMT UROIT SRAON EICLL IQCNL LIOIT RFAAN NDMTL ECESN OCOIL STOPA OACIS SAVCN ALARE EAIEC OSBNE OOHPS TSGLO LELDP MNGCM ORNUV LCLJG IINAM AOCAS TSOIL NNELA ONTEE OAAOU LIADO VNSEL RSQAM AOMOS CLVND IUREN TTEEA IIREE FOONN OORAP IYAAT ESLAI INPSO EVARO ARONE OÑNNA IGOSI ZPENA UIAAO LUEOA OERDH SVRTO MEOUI GADLR SDNIR BOESS NDTEA PEMFI LEAUI UEEOD OSSEO RLRDI ILBEU OOLTC NDTAE OSCMO OTASR SYDNO EMLMA EAEIR MIAAA IRUOR LESSC ROULE TARAN ASNÑT UNUDS EOTHC EBEGI OEDTG LOPAL LADAB DLISI SEDOE SRGDO OTODT AROAM CLCBE FDAEA HIAAI LARAE BIBEV AAMNO AIAAE POARO IIEEA EYSAF EEIEP RAGTE ANNOS OPLEA ACEDS IIIDA INZEA INNNC YYAEB EEEPI CENCU TNOSD URJIO LDESA LIITN ODIAI MEORE AEMUP EOCLE EOCAC AOC GDNFP

Things to note about this Sánchez challenge cryptogram:
* There are three 5-letter repeats (OTASR, RLESS, GDNFP), which I think would imply that this is not a simple substitution cipher.
* From the presence of “Ñ”, it seems that the plaintext is probably Spanish or Catalan [Catalan does not have a Ñ letter].
* The most common letters are EAOINRSLTC, whereas the most common letters for Spanish are EAOSNRILDT, and the most common letters for Catalan are EASRLTINOUM.
* Hence it seems that, completely unlike the WW2 pigeon cipher, this is nothing more than a path transposition cipher of a Spanish plaintext.
* The length (in characters) is 1428, which factorises as 2 x 2 x 3 x 7 x 17. [But see the update below!]
* Hence this might feasibly be formed from four sequential transposed blocks of 17 x 21 (or of 21 x 17) characters. [But see the update below!]
* Given that no algorithm is specified, it seems that the cryptogram maker is inexperienced in cryptography and hoping for “security by obscurity”.

Naturally, my normal 15% crypto-consultancy rate applies if you manage to crack it from this. 😉

What Does Nick Think?

What do I make of all this? Well, from all this I hear the clear guiding voice of someone who appears to know almost nothing about how encryption technology works in the real world of heterogenous networks and protocols: there could be no single ‘silver bullet’ that could satisfy the technological needs of encryption in all these areas simultaneously.

So all I can honestly see here is a fake from start to finish, a homegrown transposition cipher cobbled together by someone who has perhaps seen the Feynman Challenge Ciphers (but little else besides), and designed to hype some vapourware (i.e. software which hasn’t yet been written). Do I honestly believe that Sánchez’s allegedly crack team of, errm, code crackers ever existed, never mind cracked ‘our’ WW2 pigeon cipher? No, sorry, I don’t. I really don’t.

So unless anyone has proof otherwise, I call this entire story as a Big Fat Modern Bluff, someone trying to appropriate a real-life cipher mystery to promote some crypto-security vapourware that hasn’t even been written. Would I entrust my data to any company who thinks this is in any way “indecipherable”? No, I would not, sorry.

And this is exactly where I planned to finish the whole coverage of this story…

But Then I Read This…

According to this first part and this second part of detailed Spanish exposé from last September, courtesy of Madrid-based online political daily ‘El Confidencial’:

* Didac Sánchez is just a frontman for a group of companies
* Of those (at least) fifteen companies, only three have so far filed any accounts, with a total combined turnover of less than a million euros, some 2% of the amount claimed in the press.
* The journalists were unable to find any genuine trace of several of the other companies (e.g. Hilton Clinic), despite numerous promises made by Sánchez himself to supply them documentation on the companies’ activities.
* Sánchez’s original name was Diego Giménez Sánchez, but he changed it to Diego Sánchez Giménez
* Sánchez’s real history is to be found in connection with his original name (Diego Giménez Sánchez)
* On 29th May 2005, Diego Giménez Sánchez was (at the age of 12), while living in the Casal dels Infants del Raval in Barcelona, sexually abused by a 45-year-old man by the name of José María Hill Prados. José María Hill Prados was convicted in February 2007 (and banned from contacting Giménez Sánchez for five years or coming within 1000 metres of him), but later appealed, saying that Giménez Sánchez had withdrawn all the claims. However, the court was not swayed by this, or by Sánchez’s many letters (and even TV interviews) at the time. José María Hill Prados has since been released.
* Fast forward to 2015, and El Confidencial’s journalists discovered that the person actually behind all Didac Sánchez’s companies was none other than… José María Hill Prados, whom El Confidencial helpfully labels as “pederasta del Raval”.

Personally, I have no way of knowing what the truth of this matter is. At the very least, the existence of Sánchez / Hill Prados’s company ‘Eliminalia’ that helps people remove their unwanted past from the web is an aspect to this whole affair that is either horribly cynical or spectacularly ironic. Closets have rarely held more skeletons simultaneously, it would seem.

Make of all this what you will. 😐

Update: I just now noticed (*sigh*) the connection with the WW2 pigeon ciphertext – the first five-element code group (GDNFP) is the same as the last (GDNFP). In the case of the WW2 cipher, this is almost certainly because it encrypts the initial settings for the five drums used in the Typex machines used so much by the British Army: but in this challenge cipher, who knows? But this would probably make the length of the ciphertext either (by excluding the final GDNFP) 1423 (which would be a high unlikely message length for a transposition cipher, because it’s prime 🙂 ), or (by excluding both the first and final GDNFP) 1418 which equals 2 x 709, which is also somewhat unlikely as a transposition ciphertext length.

So what is probably going on is that “GDNFP” is encrypting some kind of reordering key to the transposition cipher. If A = 1, then (in ascending order) G = 7, D = 4, N = 14, F = 6, and P = 16. If an idiot programmer was behind this, one might possibly predict that this encodes a five-letter-long hex number (i.e. 0x63D5F = 408927) as the enciphering key. If an idiot mathematician was behind this, these might be indices into a list of prime numbers, A = 2, B = 3, C = 5, D = 7, E = 11, F = 13, G = 17, H = 19, I = 23, J = 29, K = 31, L = 37, M = 41, N = 43, O = 47, and P = 53, so [GDNFP] might instead encode [17,7,43,13,53]. Chances are that these are the kinds of thing this peasanty / homegrown transposition cipher will prove to use.