Dancing Men Cipher
Whimsical stick figures that mask a deadly secret, cracked only by the world's greatest detective.
The dancing men are the stick figures at the centre of "The Adventure of the Dancing Men". They form a simple substitution cipher in which each stick man stands for a letter of the alphabet. Hilton Cubitt of Ridling Thorpe Manor in Norfolk brings Sherlock Holmes a paper carrying a sequence of the figures after such messages begin to frighten his American wife, Elsie.
Quick Facts
- Type
- Substitution Cipher
- Visual basis
- Stick Figures (Dancing Men)
- Primary case
- The Adventure of the Dancing Men
Lore & Background
The messages come first by post from the United States and then appear in the garden of the manor. Their sender is Abe Slaney, a criminal from Chicago who had been engaged to Elsie, the daughter of the Chicago crime boss he works for; she had fled to escape her old life and he came to England to get her back. The last message Holmes reads, "ELSIE PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD", sends him and Watson hurrying to Norfolk, where they find Cubitt shot dead and Elsie gravely wounded. Holmes then writes a message of his own in dancing figures to bring Slaney to the house, where he is seized.
Reader's Guide
Holmes examines every occurrence of the figures, recognises a substitution cipher and breaks it by frequency analysis. A stick man that carries a flag marks the end of a word. His reasoning closely resembles that of Legrand in Poe's "The Gold Bug".
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