The Dancing Men in Japanese?


I thought it would be fun to create a code in Japanese based on characters from the Adventure of the Dancing Men which is one of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I did it mainly for my kids, to give them something challenging to do.

The Japanese hiragana system can be arranged on a grid, and is perfectly suited for codes like this because you can quickly zero in on characters by finding key elements along the top and left of the grid.

My kids loved it, and I'm sure any Japanese Sherlockians out there will also find it amusing.



Printable PDF version

dancing_men.PDF (88 k)


You have my full permission to use this code.