Sherlock Holmes's cipher from the Conan Doyle story: every letter is a figure in its own pose, and a flag marks the end of a word. Write a name or a note, download it as a PNG or SVG picture and print it. To read someone else's note, type it on the keyboard of figures.
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Each of the 26 Latin letters has its own pose. It is a simple substitution: the same letter is always the same figure.
A flag ends a word
HELLO⚑ WORLD
The notes have no spaces: the last figure of a word holds a flag. The end of the whole note needs no flag.
Russian via transliteration
Маша → MASHA
There are no figures for Cyrillic, so a Russian text is first transliterated by the Russian passport rules.
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Frequently asked questions
From Arthur Conan Doyle's story “The Adventure of the Dancing Men”, published in 1903. Mr Cubitt brings Sherlock Holmes sheets with rows of drawn figures that frighten his wife. Holmes sees that it is a simple substitution cipher: each letter is a figure in its own pose. The story does not use every letter of the alphabet, so Conan Doyle never gave a full set of 26 figures.
Type the name into the field, and the figures appear at once. Russian letters are transliterated, so «Маша» becomes MASHA, and the Latin spelling is shown under the picture. The finished row can be downloaded as a PNG or SVG picture or printed — for a card, a puzzle hunt or a lesson.
A flag in the figure's hand marks the last letter of a word — that is how the story shows the gaps between words. The notes have no spaces, and without flags the text would read as one long string. Here the last letter of the whole note has no flag, as no word follows it. On the keyboard of figures a separate “flag · space” button adds it.
With frequency analysis. The most common figure in the notes stands for E, the most common letter in English. Then Holmes guessed words: a five-figure word starting and ending with E turned out to be the name ELSIE, and a one-word reply with E in second and fourth place read NEVER. Once he had enough letters, he wrote a note in the same cipher himself and lured the sender.
There are 26 figures, one per Latin letter, and the cipher has no figures for the Russian alphabet. So a Russian text is first transliterated: «Привет» becomes PRIVET, and ж, ш, щ become ZH, SH, SHCH. The Latin spelling is shown under the picture. When decoding, the keyboard gives Latin letters, which you then read as Russian.
Press “Print” — only the figures go onto the page, without the buttons and fields. For a card or a poster, download the SVG: it stays sharp at any size. PNG suits messengers and slides. The set of figures was drawn by us from scratch rather than copied from editions of the story, so you can freely use the pictures in puzzle hunts and lessons.