3. The History of Concealment

OLD EPISODE
In this episode, we talk about concealment with Steve, Fred Fine, and my friend Al, who I'll introduce you to in the episode. More exactly, we're talking about the interesting, crazy, and cool concealments found all through history. And, of course, in the messages from the Evil Ant. Plus, if you still want more, we have a cool activity for concealing things at the end of the episode. Oh, and could you tell a friend about the show? It would be a big help.

The background music used in this episode are Bio Unit, Energy Drink, Apex, Zone, and Resonance by Bio Unit, and our theme song is Mosquito by Caspar Babypants. 

 You can find Dr. Gareth's work at drgarethmoore.com. He has released many puzzle and cipher related books for kids, as well as a lot of stuff for adults, too. 

Chapters

• 1:02 Theme Music
• 1:40 Intro
• 2:22 Story
• 8:08 The History of Concealment
• 12:26 Concealment Activity
• 14:56 Outro

Transcript

Barnabas  01:40
Welcome to the kids' code podcast. I'm Barnabas, your host, and Today we are doing something different. Making and learning codes is very good - and mostly what this show is about, but your message is likely to be intercepted by the enemy if you don't also have a good concealment tactic. Today we will talk about the history of concealment. Steve, Fred, and Police Chief Al, who you'll learn about in the story, are here in the studio. At the end of the episode there will be a cool top secret project, so stick around. Now let's get to the story.

Barnabas  02:30
Fred Fine and the other police officers are investigating how Emily End seems to be sending and receiving messages.

Steve  02:41
Wait - wasn't today's episode about Dangerous Dave trying to rob the museum?

Barnabas  02:50
This is what happens before then. Next time we will see what happens at the museum.

Barnabas  02:59
So, as I was saying, Fred Fine and the other police officers are investigating how Emily End is sending - and getting messages. They had to look carefully check everything that she received. The first thing was a sweater that for some reason was covered in knots. They looked at it to try to see if there was anything that could help them figure out what seemed to be a secret message. Then, Police Chief Al, who was the police chief, said

Police Chief Al  03:54
I know. Let's put it  up to that wall with the alphabet on it that just appeared from nowhere and see if we can figure out the message.

Barnabas  04:10
They did this, and discovered that it was a secret message, and it said

Dangerous Dave  04:18
The main window on the east side of the prison easily comes out.

Barnabas  04:26
They fixed the window and kept on looking. A few days later, somebody sent Emily End an old order for cigars. They looked at it, and Fred had an idea.

Fred Fine  04:50
Might the numbers be a code, like, numbers* or something like that?

Barnabas  04:56
They tried this, and one of those codes worked, and the message was:

Evil Ant  05:05
Dear Emily End,
  I will try to think of a way to get you out of prison.
         Evil Ant

Barnabas  05:21
After that message, they made everyone keep close guard on the prison and very, very carefully inspect every single letter Emily End got. Then, one day, Emily End got a letter which didn't seem very suspicious, but Fred Fine noticed

Fred Fine  05:49
Hey - isn't that part the Evil Ant's handwriting? And isn't that part Dangerous Dave's writing? There's got to be something up with it.

Barnabas  06:05
They looked at it, to try to figure it out, but they couldn't see any possible code with it. They checked all sorts of Null Ciphers**, all sorts of other ciphers and codes, but they couldn't see anything. Then Fred had an idea.

Fred Fine  06:27
Hey - what if it is secret inks? Secret inks could be hidden in lots of places on the page, and that is probably on of the best concealments.

Barnabas  06:44
They started looking for secret inks. First they tried wax, then jam, then Fred had another idea.

Fred Fine  06:55
Hey - what about the onion juice kind of thing?

Barnabas  07:00
They tried that, and that worked. The message said:

Evil Ant  07:04
Dear Emily End,

Dangerous Dave  07:07
If you can, be at the window on the west side of the jail tonight at midnight. You will hear a small beep, then throw down a rope or something. and attach it at your end. We'll attach it at the bottom so that you can climb down. Then we'll escape into the night.

Evil Ant  07:34
Evil Ant, and

Dangerous Dave  07:38
Dangerous Dave.

Barnabas  07:41
At midnight, the police officers stood around the window. One of the badguys came up to try to loosen the window from the outside, and they scared him away. THE END.

Barnabas  08:01
Well, I hope you liked the story. Next time we will find out what happens at the museum.

Police Chief Al  08:09
Meow can we learn about some great concealment tactics?

Barnabas  08:16
Okay, Al. There are 2 types of concealment - physically hiding a message, and concealing a message in another message. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus told of a general who used his servants as messengers in this way. He (the general, not Herodotus) cut the hair of a servant and and tattooed  the message to his skull. When his hair grew in, the servant was sent on his way. Another master Herodotus described was much worse to his servants when he needed to send important information. He found a servant who complained about poor eyesight and told him that he had a solution. He shaved the slave's head, and branded  the message his scalp! When the hair grew back in again the master told the servant that his eyesight would be better when he had his head shaved at a camp a few miles away.

Steve  09:33
Ouch! I'm glad I'm not that slave.

Fred  09:38
I agree!

Barnabas  09:42
Aeneas Tacticus, another Greek, talked about a message that a horseman carried to a spy. The soldier had the message hidden under his armor when his army went out on a raid. When the enemy came into sight, he fell off his horse on purpose so that he would be taken to the enemy camp. When he was taken there he could easily give the message to a spy.

Fred Fine  10:14
Wow, that's a cool concealment trick.

Barnabas  10:19
(Chuckle) It's one of my favorites, too. Aeneas Tacticus also wrote about generals who would give injured soldiers bandages containing secret messages and about little pieces of tin that had messages on them that messengers sewed to their sandals. In World War II, spies used lots of cool methods of concealment. One spy, who was watching U.S. Navy activity, sent reports disguised as an order for cigars. It worked until a U.S. agent realized that he was ordering an extraordinary number of cigars. Some spies did more than hiding their messages in other messages. One spy, who smoked a pipe, invented a pipe that had a secret chamber that you could put a message in. The chamber had another secret: With a twist of the pipe, it opened just enough for the burning tobacco to light the message. With a couple of puffs, there would be nothing left but ashes. One of the coolest concealments of the war was a handknit sweater sent from a German agent in England to Germany. Suspicious of the knots that covered the sweater in no particular order, British agents confiscated it. Then they had an idea about why there were knots all over the sweater. They unwound the sweater, and when they held the string up to a wall with the alphabet on it, each knot being the next one's starting place, the message was revealed.

Steve  12:27
It's time for the activity!

Barnabas  12:32
Yes, Steve. If you have an unneeded book that is at least 6 inches wide and 10 inches long, as well as a few other things, you can make a secret compartment for small things. Here's what you need:

• A gluestick,
• A knife (or scissors, if you don't have a knife that you can use),
• A pencil, and
• An unneeded hardcover book (100 pages or more is best, but you can have as few as 45).

First, turn to page 20 or so. It doesn't matter exactly what page you start on, but there should be a "safety zone" of 10 to 30 pages at the start of the book (so that if someone opens the book they will see the title page and a few normal pages). I would also advise you to have a safety zone at the back of the book that is 5 to 15 pages long. If your book has a lot of pages - 450 or more - it's a good idea to have longer safety zones (say, you have a 600 page book and you have a front safety zone of 40 pages and a back safety zone of 25). When you find a spot to start your secret compartment, draw a rectangle on the page. Depending on what you want to use the compartment for, the rectangle will be different sizes, but make sure that the side of the rectangle is at least 1 inch from the edge of the paper, so that the pages don't fall apart. Next, take the knife and carefully cut through as many pages as you can without pushing to hard. It's better to take your time and only cut through a few pages each time than try to cut through the whole book in a few swipes. Finally, glue together the pages you just cut. you now have a compartment that would fool the unsuspecting eye.

Barnabas  14:57
Well, that's it for this week. Next time we will be talking about a code that has it's own concealment method built in. My sources for this episode are Top Secret by Paul B. Janeczko and Siege Defense by Aeneas Tacticus. See you next time!

*Numbers - a very simple cipher in which a letter is substituted for a number. A would be 1, B would be 2, all the way until Z = 26.
**Null Ciphers - an interesting cipher which we will talk about in the next episode.