Tool to decrypt/encrypt dancing men code (cipher used in the Sherlock Holmes book of the same name). A monoalphabetic substitution cipher made of little men displayed with legs and arms dancing.
Dancing Men Cipher - dCode
Tag(s) : Symbol Substitution
dCode is free and its tools are a valuable help in games, maths, geocaching, puzzles and problems to solve every day!
A suggestion ? a feedback ? a bug ? an idea ? Write to dCode!
Decryption of Dancing Men consists is a substitution of a dancing man with a letter.
Example: Some men have a flag or a hat, some cryptologist ignores that, and some use it to indicate uppercase or to indicate the end of a word.
The original edition (the one used by dCode to crypt) is the most known. Another can be found on Internet, no source about it, dCode can decrypt it but one should avoid it.
The ciphered message is constituted of cryptograms with men dancing or moving and having specific positions of legs and arms.
In the book, symboles are described as absurd little figures dancing across the paper.
The presence or not of a flag or a round hat is the only known variant.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book has been published in 1903.
dCode retains ownership of the "Dancing Men Cipher" source code. Except explicit open source licence (indicated Creative Commons / free), the "Dancing Men Cipher" algorithm, the applet or snippet (converter, solver, encryption / decryption, encoding / decoding, ciphering / deciphering, breaker, translator), or the "Dancing Men Cipher" functions (calculate, convert, solve, decrypt / encrypt, decipher / cipher, decode / encode, translate) written in any informatic language (Python, Java, PHP, C#, Javascript, Matlab, etc.) and all data download, script, or API access for "Dancing Men Cipher" are not public, same for offline use on PC, mobile, tablet, iPhone or Android app!
Reminder : dCode is free to use.
The copy-paste of the page "Dancing Men Cipher" or any of its results, is allowed (even for commercial purposes) as long as you cite dCode!
Exporting results as a .csv or .txt file is free by clicking on the export icon
Cite as source (bibliography):
Dancing Men Cipher on dCode.fr [online website], retrieved on 2023-09-27,