Meet Camo. Press play to watch the video.
Your mission
Camo the chameleon is a master of hiding in plain sight. Some secret messages hide the same way, inside notes that look completely ordinary. Today you will learn to find them, and then to write your own.
- Watch Camo's video.
- Open each tab, from left to right.
- Earn four badges to unlock The Secret Mailbox.
Take your time. If you miss a question, you get a new one, so think before you click.
My badges
Teacher note
- Built for grades 3 to 5. Plan on 40 to 50 minutes. Write it is the heart of the lesson, so leave it plenty of time.
- Write it is a creative writing task. Students craft a normal-sounding note around a secret word, first in one sentence and later as a four-line letter.
- The page checks that the first letters spell the secret and that each word looks like a word. It cannot judge whether a note sounds natural. That part is a partner check: students read the note out loud and decide together.
- A Word ideas button offers starter words for each letter, which helps younger writers. Students can always type their own words.
- Students cannot click until they get it right. A missed question swaps in a new question, and three misses on a hidden word bring a new note.
- The Secret Mailbox is a team challenge. Its last lock needs a partner to find the secret in a note the student wrote.
- The Message Machine, a free checker and revealer, stays locked until the mailbox is open.
- Offline extension: students write an acrostic letter to a family member with a kind hidden word down the side.
- Vocabulary for older groups: hiding the fact that a message exists is called steganography.
- Progress saves in the browser on this Chromebook only.
Hiding in plain sight
Most secret codes look like secret codes. If a snoop finds a note that says XZG, the snoop knows right away that something is hidden.
A hidden message is sneakier. The note looks completely ordinary, like a letter to a friend or a shopping list. The snoop reads it, shrugs, and walks away. The secret was there the whole time.
That is called hiding in plain sight. A chameleon does it on a leaf. A good spy does it on paper.
Read the first letters
Here is the most common trick. Read only the first letter of each word.
The note has four words, so it hides four letters. One letter comes from each word.
Look down the side
A secret can also hide down the side of a letter or a poem. Read the first letter of each line, from top to bottom.
The author of Alice in Wonderland did this. He ended one of his books with a poem, and the first letters of its lines spell the name of a real girl named Alice.
The rule is the key
First letters are only one rule. The sender and the reader can agree on any rule they like. It could be the last letter of each word, or every second word, or every third word.
The rule is the key. Without it, the reader does not know where to look. Try the rules on this note.
Pick a rule to see what it finds.
Now you are the spy
Finding a hidden message is the easy part. Writing one is the real skill. Your note has to do two jobs at once.
- The first letters must spell your secret.
- The note must sound so normal that a snoop would never look twice.
Stuck on a letter? Press Word ideas. And remember, names are a spy's best friend. Any name can start a sentence.
Which rule is it?
A code breaker who suspects a hidden message has one job: find the rule. So the code breaker tests one rule after another. When real words show up, the note is cracked.
These notes do not use first letters. Test the rules and find each secret.