IELTS Real Reading Test 2025 - Q3 Test 2 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Real Reading Test 2025 - Q3 Test 2 được lấy từ cuốn sách Real Test 2025 - Q3 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking, kèm answer key và list từ vựng IELTS cần học trong bài đọc.
IELTS Real Reading Test 2025 - Q3 Test 2 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 1
Question 1 - 6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1
In the cultivation of olives, a period without rain is advantageous.
2
The most fertile fields are usually chosen for growing olives.
3
In ancient Greece, the olive tree was said to have divine origins.
4
Olive oil was more costly to buy in Greece than gold.
5
Plato mentions the use of olive oil in the preparation of food.
6
North African farmers initially resisted the introduction of olive trees.
Question 7 - 9
Complete the flow-chart below
Write ONE WORD ONLY for each answer
Ancient olive oil processing
STEP 01
olives are harvested by picking them or the trees
STEP 02
milling stage
STEP 03
olives are washed and crushed and seeds removed
STEP 04
olive flesh is placed in and pressed
STEP 05
water is poured over the mixture
STEP 06
resulting liquid is given time to settle and separate, and is used to aid the process
STEP 07
oil is drawn off and separation repeated
Question 10 - 13
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Amurca
In ancient times, this waste liquid was usually thrown away, which led to
10.
.
However, Romans had practical applications for America:
• when dried, created hard surface, so used on
11.
of certain buildings
• used when making
12.
• into goods to wear fed to livestock
• used on farms as a
13.
to stop insects or animals damaging crops
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 2
Question 14 - 21
The Reading Passage has nine paragraphs A-I.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A and C-I from the list of headings below.
Example: Paragraph B xii The challenge for scientists
List of Headings
I
An analysis of protective coatings
II
Applying technology to violin production
III
Location - a key factor
IV
A controversial range of prices
V
Techniques of mass production
VI
The advantages of older wood
VII
A re-evaluation of documentary evidence
VIII
The mathematical basis of earlier design
IX
Manual woodworking techniques
X
Preferences of top musicians
XI
The use of saturated wood
XII
The challenge for scientists
14
Paragraph A
15
Paragraph C
16
Paragraph D
17
Paragraph E
18
Paragraph F
19
Paragraph G
20
Paragraph H
21
Paragraph I
Question 22 - 26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
22
The quality of any particular note played on the same violin varies.
23
Scientific instruments analyse complex sound more accurately than humans.
24
The quality of handmade violins varies according to the musical ability of the craftsman.
25
Modern violins seem to improve in their early years.
26
Modern violins are gaining in popularity amongst the top violinists.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 3
Question 27 - 30
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
27
It is uncertain when the Voynich manuscript was written.
28
Wilfrid Voynich donated the manuscript to the Beinecke Library.
29
Interest in the Voynich manuscript extends beyond that of academics and professional codebreakers.
30
The text of the Voynich manuscript contains just under 70 symbols.
Question 31 - 34
Look at the following statements and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A-H.
Write the correct letter, A-H.
List of Findings
A
Gordon Rugg
B
Roger Bacon
C
William Newbold
D
William Friedman
E
Rob Churchill
F
Gabriel Landini
G
Ren Zandbergen
H
Girolamo Cardano
31
The number of times that some words occur make it unlikely that the manuscript is based on an authentic language.
32
Unlike some other similar objects of fascination, people can gain direct access to the Voynich manuscript.
33
The person who wrote the manuscript may not have been entirely sane.
34
It is likely that the author of the manuscript is the same person as suggested by Wilfrid Voynich.
Question 35 - 39
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
VOYNICH RESEARCHERS
William Newbold believed that the author of the Voynich manuscript had been able to look at cells through a . Other researchers later demonstrated that there were flaws in his argument. William Friedman concluded that the manuscript was written in an artificial language that was based on . He couldn’t find out the meaning of this language but he believed that the would continue to bring advances in codebreaking.
Dr Gabriel Landini used a system known as in his research, and claims to have demonstrated the presence of genuine words.
Dr Gordon Rugg’s system involved a grille, that made it possible to quickly select symbols that appeared in a . Rugg’s conclusion was that the manuscript lacked genuine meaning.
Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes on your answer sheet.
40
The writer’s main aim in this passage is to
A
explain the meaning of the manuscript.
B
determine the true identity of the manuscript's author.
C
describe the numerous attempts to decode the manuscript.
D
identify which research into the manuscript has had the most media coverage.
DOL IELTS Đình Lực
05/05/2026
📖 Bài đọc passage 1
The early history of olive oil
A
A. Olive oil is produced from the fruit of the olive tree, which is a member of the Oleaceae plant family. The trees require some cold weather during the year, but also tolerate hot, dry conditions, and do not like moisture when they are flowering. They actually produce better when subjected to these stressful conditions, and as a result, olive trees have traditionally been grown on land where little else will survive.
B
B. Archaeologists today are divided over exactly where the first domestication of the olive occurred: some say it was in the area which is now Iran, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, while others contend it was in mainland Greece or on the island of Crete. The one thing that can be said with certainty is that cultivation began at least 6,000 years ago and spread slowly westward across the lands bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. Olive oil was used for a variety of purposes during these early times, including as a pharmacological ointment and in rituals for anointing royalty.
C
The ancient Greeks believed the olive tree was a priceless gift from the goddess Athena and used its oil in sacred religious rituals. In fact, the Greek poet Homer called olive oil 'liquid gold', and during the 6th and 7th centuries BC Greek, law forbade the cutting down of olive trees and made it punishable by death. The ancient Middle Eastern ruler King David valued his groves of olive trees and his olive oil warehouses so much that he posted guards around the clock to protect them.
D
Over the years, olive oil developed other uses. Its employment in cooking dates at least as far back as the 5th century BC, as described by the Greek philosopher Plato. Its use as an aid to beauty and health later became ingrained in many Mediterranean cultures. The Romans, for example, are said to have used generous amounts on their bodies to moisturise their skin after bathing. With the spread of the Roman Empire, olive oil became a major commodity and its trade promoted commerce throughout the ancient world. It is generally believed that in the 1st-2nd century BC, olive trees were taken to North Africa and then to Spain, which was later to become the world's largest producer of olive oil. Artefacts found at various Mediterranean archaeological sites include olive oil storage vessels with olive plant residue still in them. Historical evidence still in existence in the form of wall paintings and ancient manuscripts (including the works of the Roman naturalist and philosopher, Pliny the Elder) all record production techniques and the various uses of olive oil.
E
Making olive oil in those early days was a laborious process accomplished without mechanisation. Processing or milling the fruit involved several distinct stages to extract the liquid. The olives were harvested from the trees by hand or by beating the fruit from the trees with long sticks. The olives were then rinsed and crushed to separate out the large seed found in the centre of each. The remaining seedless flesh was put in woven bags and pressed. Hot water was then poured over the bags to separate the oil from the solid bits of olive. The liquid produced in this process, consisting of oil and water, was drained into stone basins or tanks, where it was allowed to settle and separate. In cold weather a bit of salt was added to speed up the process. As much oil as possible was drawn off the water, but the result was still not pure oil. Therefore, this impure mixture was allowed once more to settle in vats and then separated in order to refine the product.
F
The waste water from the milling process, which is called amurca, is a bitter-tasting and foul-smelling liquid. In many ancient civilisations it was often simply discarded, causing serious pollution because of its acidity and high salt content. However, in the Roman period it was regarded as a very useful substance. When spread on surfaces, amurca forms a hard finish and therefore it was often applied to the floors of grain storage buildings where it hardened, keeping out water, mud and pests. When boiled down amurca was applied to leather to soften it so that it was easier to shape into articles of clothing and shoes. It could also be eaten by farm animals and was, in fact, fed to livestock suffering from malnutrition. According to ancient texts, amurca was also utilised in moderate amounts by farmers as a fertiliser or as a pesticide helping them to protect their crops from insects and even small rodents.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 1
1
True
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài True / False / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: a period without rain is advantageous in the cultivation of olives
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: “olive trees”, “without rain”, “dry conditions”, “advantageous”.
=> Dựa vào các từ khoá trên -> Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn A.
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: “The trees require some cold weather during the year, but also tolerate hot, dry conditions, and do not like moisture when they are flowering.”
Simplified: olive trees toleratehot, dry conditions and do not like moisture when flowering
Main idea: Cây ô-liu chịu được điều kiện khô nóng và không thích độ ẩm khi ra hoa.
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Cây ô-liu không thích ẩm ướt và chịu được điều kiện khô → thời kỳ không mưa là thuận lợi.
Trong câu hỏi: Nói rằng thời kỳ không có mưa là có lợi cho việc trồng ô-liu.
⇒ Hai ý tương đương về mặt logic.
✅ Chọn: TRUE
-------
Giải thích vì sao không phải FALSE / NOT GIVEN?
FALSE: Nếu bài nói cây ô-liu cần nhiều mưa → bài nói ngược lại (“do not like moisture”).
NOT GIVEN: Nếu bài không đề cập đến mưa/độ ẩm → nhưng bài nói rất rõ về “dry conditions” và “moisture”.
A. Violins made by long-dead Italian craftsmen from the Cremona region are beautiful works of art, coveted by collectors as well as players. Particularly outstanding violins have reputedly changed hands for over a million pounds. In contrast, fine modern instruments can be bought for under £100. Do such figures really reflect such large differences in quality? After more than a hundred years of vigorous debate, this question remains highly contentious, provoking strongly held but divergent views among musicians, violin makers and scientists alike.
B
Every violin, whether a Stradivarius or the cheapest factory- made copy, has a distinctive 'voice' of its О. Just as any musician can immediately recognise the difference between Domingo and Pavarotti singing the same operatic aria, so a skilled violinist can distinguish between different qualities in the sound produced by individual Stradivari or Guarneri violins. Individual notes on a single instrument sound different each time they are played, which suggests that the perceived tone of a violin must be related to the overall design of the instrument, rather than the frequencies of particular resonances on it. But although various attempts have been made to analyse such global properties, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between a fine Stradivarius instrument and an indifferent modern copy on the basis of the measured response alone. The ear is a supreme detection device, and a system has yet to be developed which can match the brain’s sophisticated ability to assess complex sounds.
C
So how do skilled violinmakers optimise the tone of an instrument during the construction process? They begin by selecting a wood of the highest possible quality for the front and back plates (or parts of the violin), which they test by tapping with a hammer and judging how well it ‘rings’. The next important step is to skillfully carve the plates out of the solid wood, taking great care to get the right degree of arching and variations in thickness. Traditional makers optimise the thickness by testing the ‘feel’ of the plates when they are flexed, and by the sounds produced when they are tapped at different positions with the knuckles.
D
However, in the last 50 years or so a group of violin makers has emerged who have tried to take a more overtly scientific approach to violin making. One common practice they have adopted is to replace the traditional flexing and tapping of plates by controlled measurements. During the carving process, the thinned plates are sprinkled with flakes of glitter and suspended horizontally above a loudspeaker. The glitter forms a pattern each time the loudspeaker excites a resonance. The aim is to interactively 'tune' these first few free plate resonances to specified patterns.
E
Unfortunately, there are very few examples of such measurements for really fine Italian instruments because their owners are naturally reluctant to allow their violins to be taken apart for the sake of science. The few tests that have been performed suggest that the first Italian makers may have tuned the resonant modes of the individual plates - which they could identify as they tapped them - to exact musical intervals. This would be consistent with the prevailing Renaissance view of ‘perfection’, which was measured in terms of numbers and exact ratios. However, there is no historical data to support this case.
F
Another factor that affects sound quality is the presence of moisture. To achieve the quality of ‘vibrancy’ in a violin requires high-quality wood with low internal damping. By measuring the pattern of growth-rings in the wood of a Stradivarius, we know that the Italian violin makers sometimes used planks of wood that had only been seasoned for five years. However, such wood is now 300 years old, and the intrinsic internal damping will almost certainly have decreased with time. The age of the wood may therefore automatically contribute to the improved quality of older instruments. This may also explain why the quality of a modern instrument appears to improve in its first few years.
G
Another factor thought to account for sound quality is the nature of the varnish used to protect the instrument. One of the most popular theories for well over a century to account for the Stradivarius secret has been that the varnish had some sort of ‘magic’ composition. However, historical research has shown that it was very similar to the varnish used today. So apart from the possibility that the Italian varnish was contaminated with the wings of passing insects and debris from the workshop floor, there is no convincing evidence to support the idea of a secret formula.
H
Other researchers, meanwhile, have claimed that Stradivarius’s secret was to soak the timber in water, to leach out supposedly harmful chemicals, before it was seasoned. Although this would be consistent with the idea that the masts and cars of recently sunken Venetian war galleys might have been used to make violins, other scientific and historical evidence to support this view is unconvincing.
I
In conclusion, science has not provided any convincing evidence to set Cremonese instruments apart from the finest violins made by skilled craftsmen today. Indeed, some leading soloists do occasionally play on modern instruments. However, the foremost soloists - and, not surprisingly, violin dealers, who have a vested interest in maintaining the Cremonese legend of intrinsic superiority - remain utterly unconvinced.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 2
14
IV
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Headings
✅ Paragraph A → Đáp án đúng: D. A controversial range of prices
-------
📌 Giải thích chi tiết
Step 01: Read to understand main idea
→ Đại ý toàn đoạn: Đoạn A nêu bật sự chênh lệch rất lớn về giá giữa violin cổ Cremona và violin hiện đại, đồng thời nhấn mạnh rằng sự chênh lệch này là vấn đề gây tranh cãi lâu dài.
-------
Step 02: Compare meaning with meaning
– Đại ý của đoạn:Một khoảng giá rất rộng và gây tranh cãi của violin.
=> ✅ Chọn đáp án đúng:D. A controversial range of prices
– Giải thích: Heading D khớp hoàn toàn với hai trục ý chính của đoạn:
(i)phạm vi giá cực rộng (từ dưới £100 đến hơn £1 triệu),
(ii)tranh cãi kéo dài về việc liệu mức giá đó có phản ánh chất lượng hay không.
The starkly modern Beinecke Library at Yale University is home to some of the most valuable books in the world: first folios of Shakespeare, Gutenberg Bibles and manuscripts from the early Middle Ages. Yet the library’s most controversial possession is an unprepossessing vellum manuscript about the size of a hardback book, containing 240-odd pages of drawings and text of unknown age and authorship. Catalogued as MS408, the manuscript would attract little attention were it not for the fact that the drawings hint at esoteric knowledge, while the text seems to be some sort of code - one that no-one has been able to break. It’s known to scholars as the Voynich manuscript, after the American book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who bought the manuscript from a Jesuit college in Italy in 1912.
Over the years, the manuscript has attracted the attention of everyone from amateur dabblers to top codebreakers, all determined to succeed where countless others have failed. Academic research papers, books and websites are devoted to making sense of the contents of the manuscript, which are freely available to all. Most other mysteries involve secondhand reports,’ says Dr Gordon Rugg of Keele University, a leading Voynich expert. But this is one that you can see for yourself.
It is certainly strange: page after page of drawings of weird plants, astrological symbolism and human figures, accompanied by a script that looks likesome form of shorthand. What does it say and what are the drawings about? Voynich himself believed that the manuscript was the work of 13th century English monk Roger Bacon, famed for his knowledge of alchemy, philosophy and science. In 1921 Voynich’s view that Bacon was the writer appeared to win support from the work of William Newbold, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, who claimed to have found the key to the cipher system used by Bacon. According to Newbold, the manuscript proved that Bacon had access to a microscope centuries before they were supposedly first invented. The claim that this medieval monk had observed living cells created a sensation. It soon became clear, however, that Newbold had fallen victim to wishful thinking. Other scholars showed that his ‘decoding’ methods produced a host of possible interpretations. The Voynich manuscript has continued to defy the efforts of world-class experts. In 1944, a team was assembled to tackle the mystery, led by William Friedman, the renowned American codebreaker. They began with the most basic codebreaking task: analysing the relative frequencies of the characters making up the text, looking for signs of an underlying structure. Yet Friedman’s team soon found themselves in deep water. The precise size of the ‘alphabet’ of the Voynich manuscript was unclear: it’s possible to make out more than 70 distinct symbols among the 170,000-character text. Furthermore, Friedman discovered that some words and phrases appeared more often than expected in a standard language, casting doubt on claims that the manuscript concealed a real language, as encryption typically reduces word frequencies.
Friedman concluded that the most plausible resolution of this paradox was that ‘Voynichese’ is some sort of specially created artificial language, whose words are devised from concepts, rather than linguistics. So, could the Voynich manuscript be the earliest known example of an artificial language? Friedman’s hypothesis commands respect because of the lifetime of cryptanalytical expertise he brought to bear,’ says Rob Churchill, coauthor of the Voynich Manuscript, that still leaves a host of questions unanswered, however, such as the identity of the author and the meaning of the bizarre drawings. ‘It does little to advance our understanding of the manuscript as a whole,’ says Churchill. Even though Friedman was working more than 60 years ago, he suspected that major insights would come from using the device that had already transformed codebreaking: the computer. In this he was right - it is now the key tool for uncovering clues about the manuscript’s language.
The insights so far have been perplexing. For example, in 2001 another leading Voynich scholar, Dr Gabriel Landin of Birmingham University in the UK, published the results of his study of the manuscript using a pattern-detecting method called spectral analysis. This revealed evidence that the manuscript contains genuine words, rather than random nonsense, consistent with the existence of some underlying natural language. Yet the following year, Voynich expert Ren Zandbergen of the European Space Agency in Darmstadt, Germany showed that the entropy of the text (a measure of the rate of transfer of information) was consistent with Friedman’s suspicions that an artificial language had been used.
Many are convinced that the Voynich manuscript isn’t a hoax. For how could a medieval hoaxer create so many telltale signs of a message from random nonsense? Yet even this has been challenged in new research by Rugg. Using a system, first published by the Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano in 1550 in which a specially constructed grille issued to pick out symbols from a table, Rugg found he could rapidly generate text with many of the basic traits of the Voynich manuscript. Publishing his results in 2004 Rugg stresses that he hadn’t set out to prove the manuscript a hoax. ‘I simply demonstrated that it’s feasible to hoax something this complex in a few months.’ he says. Inevitably, others beg to differ. Some scholars, such as Zandbergen, still suspect the text has genuine meaning, though believe it may never be decipherable. Others, such as Churchill, have suggested that the sheer weirdness of the illustrations and text hint at an author who had lost touch with reality. What is clear is that the book-sized manuscript kept under lock and key at Yale University has lost none of its fascination. ‘Many derive great intellectual pleasure from solving puzzles,’ says Rugg. The Voynich manuscript is as challenging a puzzle as anyone could ask for.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 3
27
True
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài True / False / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified:
It is uncertainwhen the Voynich manuscript was written
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: "uncertain", "when", "Voynich manuscript", "was written"
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên --> Ta tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 1
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: "...containing 240-odd pages of drawings and text of unknown age and authorship." (Đoạn 1)
Simplified:
The manuscript contains 240-odd pages of drawings + text of unknown age and unknown authorship
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Bản thảo gồm khoảng 240 trang tranh vẽ và văn bản, không rõ niên đại và tác giả.
Trong câu hỏi: Thời điểm bản thảo Voynich được viết là không chắc chắn.
⇒ ✅ Chọn: TRUE
-------
Lưu ý chung:
FALSE sai vì bài đọc KHÔNG đưa ra thời điểm cụ thể hay chắc chắn về thời gian viết bản thảo.
NOT GIVEN sai vì thông tin về việc “unknown age” được nêu trực tiếp trong bài.
C. The ancient Greeks believed the olive tree was a priceless gift from the goddess Athena and used its oil in sacred religious rituals. In fact, the Greek poet Homer called olive oil 'liquid gold', and during the 6th and 7th centuries BC Greek, law forbade the cutting down of olive trees and made it punishable by death. The ancient Middle Eastern ruler King David valued his groves of olive trees and his olive oil warehouses so much that he posted guards around the clock to protect them.
D. Over the years, olive oil developed other uses. Its employment in cooking dates at least as far back as the 5th century BC, as described by the Greek philosopher Plato. Its use as an aid to beauty and health later became ingrained in many Mediterranean cultures. The Romans, for example, are said to have used generous amounts on their bodies to moisturise their skin after bathing. With the spread of the Roman Empire, olive oil became a major commodity and its trade promoted commerce throughout the ancient world. It is generally believed that in the 1st-2nd century BC, olive trees were taken to North Africa and then to Spain, which was later to become the world's largest producer of olive oil. Artefacts found at various Mediterranean archaeological sites include olive oil storage vessels with olive plant residue still in them. Historical evidence still in existence in the form of wall paintings and ancient manuscripts (including the works of the Roman naturalist and philosopher, Pliny the Elder) all record production techniques and the various uses of olive oil.
E. Making olive oil in those early days was a laborious process accomplished without mechanisation. Processing or milling the fruit involved several distinct stages to extract the liquid. The olives were harvested from the trees by hand or by beating the fruit from the trees with long sticks. The olives were then rinsed and crushed to separate out the large seed found in the centre of each. The remaining seedless flesh was put in woven bags and pressed. Hot water was then poured over the bags to separate the oil from the solid bits of olive. The liquid produced in this process, consisting of oil and water, was drained into stone basins or tanks, where it was allowed to settle and separate. In cold weather a bit of salt was added to speed up the process. As much oil as possible was drawn off the water, but the result was still not pure oil. Therefore, this impure mixture was allowed once more to settle in vats and then separated in order to refine the product.
F. The waste water from the milling process, which is called amurca, is a bitter-tasting and foul-smelling liquid. In many ancient civilisations it was often simply discarded, causing serious pollution because of its acidity and high salt content. However, in the Roman period it was regarded as a very useful substance. When spread on surfaces, amurca forms a hard finish and therefore it was often applied to the floors of grain storage buildings where it hardened, keeping out water, mud and pests. When boiled down amurca was applied to leather to soften it so that it was easier to shape into articles of clothing and shoes. It could also be eaten by farm animals and was, in fact, fed to livestock suffering from malnutrition. According to ancient texts, amurca was also utilised in moderate amounts by farmers as a fertiliser or as a pesticide helping them to protect their crops from insects and even small rodents.
hot, dry conditions
and
do not like moisture when flowering
Main idea: Cây ô-liu chịu được điều kiện khô nóng và không thích độ ẩm khi ra hoa.
B. Every violin, whether a Stradivarius or the cheapest factory- made copy, has a distinctive 'voice' of its О. Just as any musician can immediately recognise the difference between Domingo and Pavarotti singing the same operatic aria, so a skilled violinist can distinguish between different qualities in the sound produced by individual Stradivari or Guarneri violins. Individual notes on a single instrument sound different each time they are played, which suggests that the perceived tone of a violin must be related to the overall design of the instrument, rather than the frequencies of particular resonances on it. But although various attempts have been made to analyse such global properties, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between a fine Stradivarius instrument and an indifferent modern copy on the basis of the measured response alone. The ear is a supreme detection device, and a system has yet to be developed which can match the brain’s sophisticated ability to assess complex sounds.
C. So how do skilled violinmakers optimise the tone of an instrument during the construction process? They begin by selecting a wood of the highest possible quality for the front and back plates (or parts of the violin), which they test by tapping with a hammer and judging how well it ‘rings’. The next important step is to skillfully carve the plates out of the solid wood, taking great care to get the right degree of arching and variations in thickness. Traditional makers optimise the thickness by testing the ‘feel’ of the plates when they are flexed, and by the sounds produced when they are tapped at different positions with the knuckles.
D. However, in the last 50 years or so a group of violin makers has emerged who have tried to take a more overtly scientific approach to violin making. One common practice they have adopted is to replace the traditional flexing and tapping of plates by controlled measurements. During the carving process, the thinned plates are sprinkled with flakes of glitter and suspended horizontally above a loudspeaker. The glitter forms a pattern each time the loudspeaker excites a resonance. The aim is to interactively 'tune' these first few free plate resonances to specified patterns.
E. Unfortunately, there are very few examples of such measurements for really fine Italian instruments because their owners are naturally reluctant to allow their violins to be taken apart for the sake of science. The few tests that have been performed suggest that the first Italian makers may have tuned the resonant modes of the individual plates - which they could identify as they tapped them - to exact musical intervals. This would be consistent with the prevailing Renaissance view of ‘perfection’, which was measured in terms of numbers and exact ratios. However, there is no historical data to support this case.
F. Another factor that affects sound quality is the presence of moisture. To achieve the quality of ‘vibrancy’ in a violin requires high-quality wood with low internal damping. By measuring the pattern of growth-rings in the wood of a Stradivarius, we know that the Italian violin makers sometimes used planks of wood that had only been seasoned for five years. However, such wood is now 300 years old, and the intrinsic internal damping will almost certainly have decreased with time. The age of the wood may therefore automatically contribute to the improved quality of older instruments. This may also explain why the quality of a modern instrument appears to improve in its first few years.
G. Another factor thought to account for sound quality is the nature of the varnish used to protect the instrument. One of the most popular theories for well over a century to account for the Stradivarius secret has been that the varnish had some sort of ‘magic’ composition. However, historical research has shown that it was very similar to the varnish used today. So apart from the possibility that the Italian varnish was contaminated with the wings of passing insects and debris from the workshop floor, there is no convincing evidence to support the idea of a secret formula.
H. Other researchers, meanwhile, have claimed that Stradivarius’s secret was to soak the timber in water, to leach out supposedly harmful chemicals, before it was seasoned. Although this would be consistent with the idea that the masts and cars of recently sunken Venetian war galleys might have been used to make violins, other scientific and historical evidence to support this view is unconvincing.
I. In conclusion, science has not provided any convincing evidence to set Cremonese instruments apart from the finest violins made by skilled craftsmen today. Indeed, some leading soloists do occasionally play on modern instruments. However, the foremost soloists - and, not surprisingly, violin dealers, who have a vested interest in maintaining the Cremonese legend of intrinsic superiority - remain utterly unconvinced.
The starkly modern Beinecke Library at Yale University is home to some of the most valuable books in the world: first folios of Shakespeare, Gutenberg Bibles and manuscripts from the early Middle Ages. Yet the library’s most controversial possession is an unprepossessing vellum manuscript about the size of a hardback book, containing 240-odd pages of drawings and text of unknown age and authorship. Catalogued as MS408, the manuscript would attract little attention were it not for the fact that the drawings hint at esoteric knowledge, while the text seems to be some sort of code - one that no-one has been able to break. It’s known to scholars as the Voynich manuscript, after the American book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who bought the manuscript from a Jesuit college in Italy in 1912.
Over the years, the manuscript has attracted the attention of everyone from amateur dabblers to top codebreakers, all determined to succeed where countless others have failed. Academic research papers, books and websites are devoted to making sense of the contents of the manuscript, which are freely available to all. Most other mysteries involve secondhand reports,’ says Dr Gordon Rugg of Keele University, a leading Voynich expert. But this is one that you can see for yourself.
It is certainly strange: page after page of drawings of weird plants, astrological symbolism and human figures, accompanied by a script that looks likesome form of shorthand. What does it say and what are the drawings about? Voynich himself believed that the manuscript was the work of 13th century English monk Roger Bacon, famed for his knowledge of alchemy, philosophy and science. In 1921 Voynich’s view that Bacon was the writer appeared to win support from the work of William Newbold, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, who claimed to have found the key to the cipher system used by Bacon. According to Newbold, the manuscript proved that Bacon had access to a microscope centuries before they were supposedly first invented. The claim that this medieval monk had observed living cells created a sensation. It soon became clear, however, that Newbold had fallen victim to wishful thinking. Other scholars showed that his ‘decoding’ methods produced a host of possible interpretations. The Voynich manuscript has continued to defy the efforts of world-class experts. In 1944, a team was assembled to tackle the mystery, led by William Friedman, the renowned American codebreaker. They began with the most basic codebreaking task: analysing the relative frequencies of the characters making up the text, looking for signs of an underlying structure. Yet Friedman’s team soon found themselves in deep water. The precise size of the ‘alphabet’ of the Voynich manuscript was unclear: it’s possible to make out more than 70 distinct symbols among the 170,000-character text. Furthermore, Friedman discovered that some words and phrases appeared more often than expected in a standard language, casting doubt on claims that the manuscript concealed a real language, as encryption typically reduces word frequencies.
Friedman concluded that the most plausible resolution of this paradox was that ‘Voynichese’ is some sort of specially created artificial language, whose words are devised from concepts, rather than linguistics. So, could the Voynich manuscript be the earliest known example of an artificial language? Friedman’s hypothesis commands respect because of the lifetime of cryptanalytical expertise he brought to bear,’ says Rob Churchill, coauthor of the Voynich Manuscript, that still leaves a host of questions unanswered, however, such as the identity of the author and the meaning of the bizarre drawings. ‘It does little to advance our understanding of the manuscript as a whole,’ says Churchill. Even though Friedman was working more than 60 years ago, he suspected that major insights would come from using the device that had already transformed codebreaking: the computer. In this he was right - it is now the key tool for uncovering clues about the manuscript’s language.
The insights so far have been perplexing. For example, in 2001 another leading Voynich scholar, Dr Gabriel Landin of Birmingham University in the UK, published the results of his study of the manuscript using a pattern-detecting method called spectral analysis. This revealed evidence that the manuscript contains genuine words, rather than random nonsense, consistent with the existence of some underlying natural language. Yet the following year, Voynich expert Ren Zandbergen of the European Space Agency in Darmstadt, Germany showed that the entropy of the text (a measure of the rate of transfer of information) was consistent with Friedman’s suspicions that an artificial language had been used.
Many are convinced that the Voynich manuscript isn’t a hoax. For how could a medieval hoaxer create so many telltale signs of a message from random nonsense? Yet even this has been challenged in new research by Rugg. Using a system, first published by the Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano in 1550 in which a specially constructed grille issued to pick out symbols from a table, Rugg found he could rapidly generate text with many of the basic traits of the Voynich manuscript. Publishing his results in 2004 Rugg stresses that he hadn’t set out to prove the manuscript a hoax. ‘I simply demonstrated that it’s feasible to hoax something this complex in a few months.’ he says. Inevitably, others beg to differ. Some scholars, such as Zandbergen, still suspect the text has genuine meaning, though believe it may never be decipherable. Others, such as Churchill, have suggested that the sheer weirdness of the illustrations and text hint at an author who had lost touch with reality. What is clear is that the book-sized manuscript kept under lock and key at Yale University has lost none of its fascination. ‘Many derive great intellectual pleasure from solving puzzles,’ says Rugg. The Voynich manuscript is as challenging a puzzle as anyone could ask for.
TRUE
The starkly modern Beinecke Library at Yale University is home to some of the most valuable books in the world: first folios of Shakespeare, Gutenberg Bibles and manuscripts from the early Middle Ages. Yet the library’s most controversial possession is an unprepossessing vellum manuscript about the size of a hardback book, containing 240-odd pages of drawings and text of unknown age and authorship. Catalogued as MS408, the manuscript would attract little attention were it not for the fact that the drawings hint at esoteric knowledge, while the text seems to be some sort of code - one that no-one has been able to break. It’s known to scholars as the Voynich manuscript, after the American book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who bought the manuscript from a Jesuit college in Italy in 1912.
Over the years, the manuscript has attracted the attention of everyone from amateur dabblers to top codebreakers, all determined to succeed where countless others have failed. Academic research papers, books and websites are devoted to making sense of the contents of the manuscript, which are freely available to all. Most other mysteries involve secondhand reports,’ says Dr Gordon Rugg of Keele University, a leading Voynich expert. But this is one that you can see for yourself.
It is certainly strange: page after page of drawings of weird plants, astrological symbolism and human figures, accompanied by a script that looks likesome form of shorthand. What does it say and what are the drawings about? Voynich himself believed that the manuscript was the work of 13th century English monk Roger Bacon, famed for his knowledge of alchemy, philosophy and science. In 1921 Voynich’s view that Bacon was the writer appeared to win support from the work of William Newbold, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, who claimed to have found the key to the cipher system used by Bacon. According to Newbold, the manuscript proved that Bacon had access to a microscope centuries before they were supposedly first invented. The claim that this medieval monk had observed living cells created a sensation. It soon became clear, however, that Newbold had fallen victim to wishful thinking. Other scholars showed that his ‘decoding’ methods produced a host of possible interpretations. The Voynich manuscript has continued to defy the efforts of world-class experts. In 1944, a team was assembled to tackle the mystery, led by William Friedman, the renowned American codebreaker. They began with the most basic codebreaking task: analysing the relative frequencies of the characters making up the text, looking for signs of an underlying structure. Yet Friedman’s team soon found themselves in deep water. The precise size of the ‘alphabet’ of the Voynich manuscript was unclear: it’s possible to make out more than 70 distinct symbols among the 170,000-character text. Furthermore, Friedman discovered that some words and phrases appeared more often than expected in a standard language, casting doubt on claims that the manuscript concealed a real language, as encryption typically reduces word frequencies.
Friedman concluded that the most plausible resolution of this paradox was that ‘Voynichese’ is some sort of specially created artificial language, whose words are devised from concepts, rather than linguistics. So, could the Voynich manuscript be the earliest known example of an artificial language? Friedman’s hypothesis commands respect because of the lifetime of cryptanalytical expertise he brought to bear,’ says Rob Churchill, coauthor of the Voynich Manuscript, that still leaves a host of questions unanswered, however, such as the identity of the author and the meaning of the bizarre drawings. ‘It does little to advance our understanding of the manuscript as a whole,’ says Churchill. Even though Friedman was working more than 60 years ago, he suspected that major insights would come from using the device that had already transformed codebreaking: the computer. In this he was right - it is now the key tool for uncovering clues about the manuscript’s language.
The insights so far have been perplexing. For example, in 2001 another leading Voynich scholar, Dr Gabriel Landin of Birmingham University in the UK, published the results of his study of the manuscript using a pattern-detecting method called spectral analysis. This revealed evidence that the manuscript contains genuine words, rather than random nonsense, consistent with the existence of some underlying natural language. Yet the following year, Voynich expert Ren Zandbergen of the European Space Agency in Darmstadt, Germany showed that the entropy of the text (a measure of the rate of transfer of information) was consistent with Friedman’s suspicions that an artificial language had been used.
Many are convinced that the Voynich manuscript isn’t a hoax. For how could a medieval hoaxer create so many telltale signs of a message from random nonsense? Yet even this has been challenged in new research by Rugg. Using a system, first published by the Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano in 1550 in which a specially constructed grille issued to pick out symbols from a table, Rugg found he could rapidly generate text with many of the basic traits of the Voynich manuscript. Publishing his results in 2004 Rugg stresses that he hadn’t set out to prove the manuscript a hoax. ‘I simply demonstrated that it’s feasible to hoax something this complex in a few months.’ he says. Inevitably, others beg to differ. Some scholars, such as Zandbergen, still suspect the text has genuine meaning, though believe it may never be decipherable. Others, such as Churchill, have suggested that the sheer weirdness of the illustrations and text hint at an author who had lost touch with reality. What is clear is that the book-sized manuscript kept under lock and key at Yale University has lost none of its fascination. ‘Many derive great intellectual pleasure from solving puzzles,’ says Rugg. The Voynich manuscript is as challenging a puzzle as anyone could ask for.
