Sir: It has become apparent that I am not sane. I say it has become apparent: I mean, of course, that the wallabies told me. I believe implicitly what the wallabies tell me. I am not in fact disappointed: the rest of the world is stark raving mad, so I should fit in very well, for perhaps the first time in my life. The wallabies tell me that this is so, and I have faith that it is.

But what irks me is that, in your article on the Voynich Manuscript, you mentioned several obviously incorrect and even internally inconsistent theories, but you failed to mention that I have solved the puzzle correctly, thus rendering the other theories moot, and you have deprived me of another opportunity to say the word “moot,” which I like to say, moot moot moot moot moot moot moot moot moot moot moot.

The Voynich Manuscript, as I have proved myself, without the help of the wallabies, although they have attempted to claim credit and I have had to be very stern with them, is a coded guide to deciphering the code in the Voynich Manuscript. This explains everything about the Voynich Manuscript. The guide is written in an unbreakable cipher, which you would have to break in order to learn the secret of deciphering the Voynich Manscript, and this is why it has not been deciphered. Thus the book is written in such a way that the knowledge it contains is kept secure from the merely curious; and at the same time it contains the key to its own decipherment, which would be a boon to the discerning reader who likes to say boon boon boon boon boon boon boon boon boon boon boon, except that the key is itself in the same cipher, which renders the boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot boon moot.

And now, if you will excuse me, I have to clean the wallaby run.

——Sincerely, Leominster Taylor Jr. IV.

The Voynich Manuscript, that wonderfully imaginative botanical treatise whose author, not content with drawing imaginary plants, used imaginary language to describe them, is available in high-resolution scans at the Internet Archive.

It is impossible to improve upon the Voynich Manuscript itself, of course. It is unique; it could not have been improved if someone had strapped Dr. Seuss into a time machine and sent him back six hundred years. But Dr. Boli would really like to draw your attention to the “reviews” on the Archive.org page. Almost every single one has solved the wonderful mystery and unlocked the code, revealing that the manuscript is a treatise on women’s health, a message from the stars, a book of hallucinogenic herbs; the language proves to be proto-Romance, Berber, Scots Gaelic, Macedonian, one of the Landa scripts of Punjab, Syriac, Russian, or Arabic or Farsi or Greek (the reviewer seems to regard these three as more or less interchangeable).

The definiteness of the statements is wonderfully reassuring. Almost every reviewer has found the only possible solution to the puzzle.

“The Book basically describes transpeicies migration. How Fauna based life form migrate from plant to animal – e.i. human life forms.”

“Much of the text is a list of overwhelmingly Finno-Uralic names with some Dutch, Danish, French, and German tossed in now and then.”

“This is the first five books of King James. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Even though this was wrote 200 years prior.” (For the depth of erudition it displays, this is probably Dr. Boli’s favorite.)

“The algorithm is written on page 116. There is written the at Czech language. Have you found ( algorithm)!!!”

“If you study the history of Landa languages. The character hiding and mixing still happens in business communities in remote villages in Multan in Pakistan, to this day. Please widen your knowledge as I have detailed as much as possible, There is no alternative to this, because this is the truth. All the researchers so far have guessed and fooled public. I want to emphasis this again ‘English does not have these sounds’.”

“completely readable. If one backs up from trying to crack its language you can see that its in three different languages.. one is picture language, 2nd is plant language and third is most important, it is star constellations language.. Its actually telling you a story you are not ready to here..its repeating the same message on every page too..”

You will spend an hour reading these reviews, but it will be an hour well spent. You will know nothing more than you already knew about the Voynich Manuscript, of course, but you will know a great deal more about human psychology than you knew before.

Danger (noun, chiefly Southern).—One who or that which curses mildly.

The answer to yesterday’s literary puzzle: the illustration advertises H. G. Wells’ Outline of History, one of the most popular books of the early twentieth century—perhaps because its publishers knew a thing or two about promoting historical works.

This illustration, by the well-known DeAlton Valentine, was commissioned for a magazine advertisement. It was promoting a book, and your task, dear readers, is to guess what book. Dr. Boli will give you the hint that it was a very popular book by a very famous author; and, if it helps, he will even reveal the headline of the advertisement:

Akhn-Aton was human

Can you guess, without going to the Wikimedia Commons page where the image is hosted (because that will give away the source, of course) or resorting to Google’s massive artificial-intelligence empire, what book this image was advertising?