Which Sherlock Holmes story features the coded stick-figure messages called the Dancing Men?

The coded stick-figure messages appear in “The Adventure of the Dancing Men.”

The story was written by Arthur Conan Doyle and first published in The Strand Magazine in 1903. The figures look like simple drawings of dancing people, but Holmes recognizes that they form a substitution cipher. By studying repeated symbols and their positions, he works out the message system.

The case centers on Hilton Cubitt and his wife Elsie, whose past in the United States is connected to the threatening notes. The cipher creates a visual puzzle while also driving the emotional tension of the story. Holmes eventually identifies the sender as Abe Slaney, a Chicago criminal.

The Dancing Men became one of the best-known fictional ciphers. They are often cited in discussions of cryptography because the symbols demonstrate how frequency and repeated patterns can help solve a substitution code.