What is Text Steganography?
Unlike encryption (which makes text unreadable), steganography hides messages within innocent-looking text. The cache description might look completely normal, but contain coordinates hidden in the first letters of each sentence, unusual spacing, or embedded codes.
These techniques are common in geocaching because they allow puzzle setters to hide clues in plain sight without obvious ciphertext giving away that there's a puzzle to solve.
Acrostics & Initial Letters
What to Look For
An acrostic hides a message in the first (or last) letters of each line, word, sentence, or paragraph.
Example — Read the first letter of each line:
Never give up on finding the cache Over hills and through valleys you'll roam Remember to bring your GPS along The journey itself is the reward Happiness awaits at the final waypoint
Hidden message: NORTH
Variations to Check
- First letters of lines — Most common
- Last letters of lines — Called a telestich
- First letters of words — Often in a specific sentence
- First letters of sentences — Check entire description
- First letters of paragraphs — For longer texts
- Second letters — Less common but used
Solving Tip: Copy the text into a text editor and highlight just the first characters of each element. Also check if the text seems oddly formatted or has unusual line breaks — this often indicates an acrostic.
Null Ciphers
A null cipher embeds a secret message within an innocent-looking text using a rule to extract specific characters. Common patterns include every Nth word or letter.
Example — Every 3rd word:
"The weather CACHE was really IS quite nice UNDER today but THE I think BRIDGE tomorrow"
Hidden message: CACHE IS UNDER THE BRIDGE
Common Null Cipher Patterns
- Every Nth word (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th are common)
- Every Nth letter — use our Skip Cipher tool
- Words after punctuation marks
- First word of each sentence
- Words in specific positions (nouns, verbs, etc.)
Recognition Signs
- Text seems awkwardly written or unnaturally wordy
- Sentences don't quite flow naturally
- Text seems longer than necessary for the information conveyed
- Certain words seem forced or out of place
Whitespace Steganography
Hidden messages can be encoded in the invisible characters within text — extra spaces, tabs, zero-width characters, or line endings.
Types to Check
Space/Tab Binary
Spaces and tabs represent 0 and 1
"Hello[SPACE][TAB][SPACE][TAB]world" = H01010ello...
Trailing Spaces
Number of spaces at end of each line
Line 1 ends with 14 spaces = N (14th letter)
Zero-Width Characters
Invisible Unicode characters (U+200B, U+FEFF, etc.)
Text looks normal but contains hidden characters
Word Spacing
Single vs double spaces between words
"Hello[SP]world[SP][SP]today" = binary pattern
How to Detect
- Paste text into a hex editor or programmer's text editor
- Enable "Show Whitespace" in your text editor
- Check character count vs visible character count
- Copy text to a tool that reveals zero-width characters
Solving Tip: If the cache description mentions "reading between the lines" or "more than meets the eye," check for whitespace encoding.
Capital Letters & Formatting Clues
Unusual Capitalization
Letters that are capitalized when they shouldn't be often spell out a hidden message.
Example:
"the cAche is hiDDen near the oLd wEll, juSt behind tHE Stone wall"
Hidden capitals: A D D L E S H E = ADDLESHE (or rearranged)
Other Formatting Patterns
- Bold letters — Extract bold characters only
- Italic text — May spell out message
- Underlined text — Check first/last letters
- Different fonts — Unusual fonts may indicate special letters
- Colored text — Even slight color variations
Word Count & Structure Patterns
Word Count Per Line
The number of words in each line might encode numbers for coordinates.
Example:
The cache is near here today. (6 words) We found it. (3 words) Look under the bridge. (4 words) Find it now. (3 words)
Numbers: 6, 3, 4, 3
Letter Count Patterns
- Number of letters in each word
- Number of letters in each sentence
- Character position encoding (use our Character Counter)
Bacon's Cipher Style Encoding
The Bacon cipher uses two types of anything (typeface, case, spacing) to encode binary.
Example — lowercase = A, UPPERCASE = B:
thE caChe is NearBy = aaBAaBaaBBaaBBa = decoded message
Binary Indicators
- Bold vs normal text
- Upper vs lowercase
- Different fonts
- Serif vs sans-serif
- Two alternating colors
Steganography Detection Checklist
- Read first letters of lines, sentences, words, and paragraphs
- Read last letters of the same elements
- Extract capital letters that seem out of place
- Count words per line — could be coordinate digits
- Check every Nth word using our Skip Cipher
- Enable whitespace visibility in your text editor
- Look for zero-width characters (copy to hex editor)
- Check for formatted text patterns (bold, italic, color)
- Count characters using our Character Counter
- Look for binary patterns in text formatting