It looks like someone may have been telling porkie-pies!

Well, remember yesterday, when I wrote about the exciting news of a Bristol academic cracking the code to the Oddest Book in the World – the Voynich Manuscript – and it only taking him a couple of weeks where many others have failed… including Alan Turing…

Now it turns out that Bristol University have backed away from the claims at a hundred miles an hour after hearing the doubts of another scholar who tried the same method years ago. It didn’t work.

So, sorry for the false alarm, but we’re not going to be reading a translated version of this mysterious book any time soon. I just hope that, when someone actually cracks it for real, it turns out to be worth all the time and effort and not just an extended shopping list.

Eggs, milk, baked beans, toothpaste…