Sherlock Hollmeses the Day We Are Born

We are born Sherlock Holmeses.

All of us.

That's why we all play Sherlock Holmes sometimes.

Sherlock Holmes follows clues to solve crimes, to break ciphers--for example, the Dancing Men Cipher, and to have fun.

What is it to break a cipher?

A string of Dancing Men makes no sense--unless you are provided with the cipher. But Sherlock Holmes was never given the cipher by anybody. Yet he could understand the Dancing Men. He could, because he had broken the cipher; he worked it out all by himself.

The Dancing Men is a language, secret to us, but not secret to those who knows the cipher. To Sherlock Holmes the Dancing Men was originally a secret language. After he had broken it, it was secret no more.

Now we all learn our first language at our mother's knees. How do we do it?

We have no language to begin with. All languages are foreign to us; they are all secret languages. Yet at some point one of them stops being secret. We understand what we are told and we are understood in return.

We have broken the cipher!

How?

By following clues, of course.


See also We Are All Codebreakers