The Dancing Men
“The letter E is the most common in the English language.”
From “Bending the Willow” by David Stuart Davies
Michael Cox told me:
‘By the time we did that one, Jeremy and David had established a very good rapport and they contributed quite a lot of fun about the solving of the code. I know they contributed that bit of business at the end where Watson is explaining to the others how you break a code, saying E is the most frequently used letter in the alphabet. I suspect also that they contributed the moment where Watson is secretly reading Holmes’s Monograph on ciphers [a ‘trifling’ monograph upon the subject of secret writings in which he analysed 160 separate ciphers]. Whatever, that was the kind of thing they enjoyed.’