Cody began her picture by drawing seven stick figures, each standing in different positions. Next, she added a prop to each one, to make the figures look as if they were doing something. In the first figure’s hand, she drew a stop sign. In the second, she added cheerleader pom-poms. She made the third one look like it was walking a couple of dogs attached to leashes. For the fourth one, she wove a long string through both its hands, leading to a flying kite. The next figure looked as if it were reaching for something. The one after that held a long stick with two pails balanced at each end. And the last one appeared to be walking on a balance beam.

Satisfied with her simple drawing—and the coded semaphore message it contained—she wrote a cryptic title for the picture:

artistic –talented –inspired images

She was careful to write all the letters in lowercase, and made sure the dashes were attached to the beginnings of the words talented and inspired. She deliberately left off the period at the end of the sentence, to avoid confusion.

When she was finished, she double-checked her work to make sure the message was accurate. She was pretty sure that only one person in the class would be able to decipher the hidden message in her artwork: M.E. Her friend was as good at cracking codes as Cody was. That’s why they had joined Quinn and Luke to form the Code Busters Club.

“All right, class,” Ms. Stad announced. “You’ve had plenty of time to design a picture with an embedded message. Bring your pictures up to the front, one row at a time, and tape them to the whiteboard. Then we’ll see if we can find the hidden message in each picture.”

In an orderly fashion, the students brought their artwork to the board. After everyone had returned to their seats, Ms. Stad pointed to the first picture and asked who had made it. M.E. raised her hand. Cody knew her friend’s hidden message would be a challenging one to solve.

At first glance, it looked to Cody like a bunch of alphabet letters in the shape of a tree.

Code Buster’s Solution found on this page.

Then she began to see words within the tree—clay, lines, red yarn. She quickly realized that most of the words were related to art in some way. Cool! Cody thought.

“Does anyone know what the hidden message is?” Ms. Stad asked after a few minutes.

Hands shot into the air, but Cody hung back to give the others a chance to answer. Ms. Stad called on several students, who announced the words they saw in the letter tree. But Cody had a feeling there was more to it than just art-related words. M.E. must have hidden something else.

“Did they figure out your message, MariaElena?” Ms. Stad asked, calling the girl by her full name.

“Only part of it,” M.E. replied with a grin. “There’s more.”

I knew it! Cody thought. She studied the letters and wondered why M.E. had arranged them in that particular design. Why a tree and not a spiral or a box? And although the words were related to art, they still seemed kind of random. Red yarn? Art colors? Hue glue blue? Why didn’t M.E. just write a continuing sentence using the tree shape?

Because, Cody realized suddenly, M.E. had spelled out a message that read down, not across!

Cody jotted down the message and raised her hand before anyone else.

“Cody?” Ms. Stad said. “Do you know the answer?”

Cody stood and approached the picture. “The message is actually written down the middle of the tree letters.” She ran a finger down the letters in the center as she said the words aloud.

The class voiced a collective “Ahh!” as they finally recognized M.E.’s concealed message. Cody turned to her friend at the back and grinned. M.E. gave her a thumbs-up.

“Good job, Cody!” Ms. Stad said, looking pleased as Cody returned to her seat. “All right, class. Are you ready for the next one?” Cody’s teacher indicated a drawing that looked like a maze.

Code Buster’s Solution found on this page.

This is an easy one, Cody thought. All she had to do was follow the letters to make a word, then follow the words to make a sentence. Moments later she raised her hand, along with M.E. and several other students. Ms. Stad called on Lauren, who went to the board and pointed out the hidden message as she read it aloud.

“Excellent, Lauren,” Ms. Stad said. She pointed to the next picture, composed of three drawings. To Cody, it looked like a bunch of fancy squiggles.

Code Buster’s Solution found on this page.

Cody concentrated on the first drawing. After staring at it for a few seconds, she saw the shape of a letter begin to emerge. Figuring the other two drawings were also letters, she focused on the second one until she recognized it, then studied the third one. Together the three letters formed a word! Cool, Cody thought. She liked how the student had made each hidden letter look like a work of art.

“Whose picture is this?” Ms. Stad asked the class.

To Cody’s surprise, Matt raised his hand. Wow. She never knew he had such talent. Most of his artwork was monsters and dragons.

“Nice job, Matthew,” Ms. Stad said.

The picture puzzle activity continued through the rest of the student drawings. Cody was able to decipher all of them, although a couple were harder to crack than others. Finally, Ms. Stad came to Cody’s picture, which was next to last.

artistic –talented –inspired images

“Who drew that one?” Matt the Brat said loudly. “It’s just a bunch of stick figures. There’s no hidden message. It says right above: ‘artistic, talented, inspired images.’ That’s lame.”

Ms. Stad glared at Matt, who sat in front of Cody. “Matthew, if you speak without raising your hand one more time, you’re going to Mr. Grant’s office. Do you understand?”

Matt slunk down in his chair, red-faced, and stared at his desktop. Ms. Stad often had to send Matt to the principal’s office for misbehaving in class. Cody wondered if Mr. Grunt—er, Grant—was sick of seeing him every week.

“Now,” Ms. Stad continued, “does anyone see a hidden message in this picture?”

A few hands went up. Cody listened to some of the wild guesses about her drawing.

“Are the stick figures supposed to be shaped like letters?” Annika asked.

“Do the words at the top have words inside them?” asked Liam.

“Is the message written in invisible ink?” said Thomas in the front row.

“It seems to be very complex,” Ms. Stad said, staring at the picture. She looked out at her students. “Whose picture is this?”

Cody raised her hand.

“Cody, are any of those answers correct?” Ms. Stad asked.

“Nope,” she said, feeling proud that no one had cracked the code yet.

“Could you give us a hint?” Ms. Stad suggested.

“Okay, well, the stick figures don’t form letters, but they do stand for letters.…”

“They’re semaphores!” announced a boy named Connor after Ms. Stad called on him. “They’re supposed to be holding flags, but if you look at the position of their arms, you can figure out what each letter is. The first one is b—”

“Don’t tell!” Ms. Stad said. “Let the rest of the students try to decode the letters by themselves. Everyone, use your semaphore decoder card to find the answer.”

The students pulled out their decoder cards from their desks. As part of their language unit, Ms. Stadelhofer had made decoder cards for the students for each new code they were learning. The kids thumbed through their packs until they found the one with semaphores. Moments later, most of the students had translated the stick figure message.

Ms. Stad called on Spencer, Connor’s twin brother, who gave the answer.

“But I still don’t know what it’s supposed to mean,” Spencer said, frowning.

“There’s more to it,” Cody said to the class. “You’re supposed to look at the title of the picture, too.”

The students continued to study Cody’s picture, but no one said anything more.

“How about another hint?” Ms. Stad said.

“Okay, um … remember what Ms. Stad taught us during handwriting: Don’t forget to dot your i’s and cross your t’s.”

After a few minutes, one hand went up.

“MariaElena?” Ms. Stad said. “Do you know the answer?”

She nodded, grinning. “The title is actually written in hidden Morse code.”

“Nuh-uh,” said Matt the Brat, raising his hand. “There’s no dots or dashes.”

M.E. stood up and moved to the front of the room. She pointed to the first word, artistic, then said, “Do you see any dots or dashes in that word?”

“Ooh!” said several class members, as they realized what she meant.

Connor raised his hand. “The t’s and i’s are supposed to be dashes and dots! The code hidden in the word artistic is actually t i t i—dash, dot, dash, dot. That’s the letter c in Morse code!”

“Very good, Connor!” Ms. Stad wrote the dots, dashes, and letters on the board above the picture as the students called them out.

t i t i -.-. t t t - - - t i i - . . i .

Using their Morse code decoder cards, the students quickly deciphered the hidden message.

Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page and this page, this page.

“Nice work, Cody!” Ms. Stad said. “You hid the message well, yet it was still right in front of our eyes. I love the way you used pictures and words to hide two different messages. That’s a perfect example of steganography.”

Cody felt her face flush hot. She was glad her teacher liked her work, but she was embarrassed to receive such praise in front of everyone. She returned to her seat and sat down, hoping the other students would stop looking at her.

“All right, class,” Ms. Stad said, drawing attention away from Cody. “There’s one last picture. Does anyone know what the concealed message is here?” She pointed to the image.

The students grew silent as they gazed at the picture of a triangle with an eye in the middle. To Cody, the drawing sort of looked Egyptian, reminding her of the pendant Ms. Cassatt wore around her neck, but she had no idea what it was supposed to mean. It didn’t appear to have any letters or symbols, other than an eye and a triangle. Was there really a message hidden in the picture? She worked on translating the Egyptian hieroglyphs underneath, but the letters formed nonsensical words.

For the first time in a long while, Cody was completely stumped.