Episode 18 - The Dancing Men

by Leah Strickland

The 1903 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short story “Sherlock Holmes and the Dancing Men” features an unusual cipher. In this podcast, I give a summary of the story, so listeners will understand why Sherlock solving the puzzle is important. I then explain how Sherlock was able to solve the Dancing Men cipher. He was able to solve it by using frequency analysis. I go on to explain how Sherlock solving this cipher is unrealistic because of more messages needed to be sent for frequency analysis to be more accurate. I then talk about how the dancing men cipher is similar to the Gold Bug cipher created by Edgar Allan Poe. I then describe some similarities between the two authors and their ciphers. I finish off my podcast by giving an example of popular cryptography in modern times.

I would like to thank Xiaoyu Dong and Xin Yi Zhang for helping me edit my script.

Sources

• https://www.geocachingtoolbox.com/index.php?page=dancingMen
• https://www.arthurconandoyle.com/biography.html
• https://illuminations.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Content/Lessons/Resources/9-12/Caesar-DancingMen.pdf
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/substitution-cipher
• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/446/how-much-did-forensic-science-at-the-time-of-sherlock-holmes-publication-influe

Illustration by Sidney Paget.