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CASE 018 · Spelling-Variant Steganography

Variant Dispatch

A four-letter signal is carried by deliberate spelling variants. Use the recovered codebook and carrier order to reconstruct it.

Advanced 450 pts Hint penalty: 65 pts

Artifact

Inspect this carefully

Two editorial passes survived in the case file. The facts are ordinary; the spelling policy is not.

Morning copy

  1. The inspection form notes the color of the signal lamp beside the east door.
  2. At the centre of the courtyard, a brass marker aligns with the drain.
  3. Technicians analyze the residue before sealing the sample tray.
  4. Clerks organise the evidence tags by time and storage shelf.
  5. The camera log records unusual behavior near the service gate.
  6. The outer wall remains part of the site's passive defence.
  7. A courier was travelling south when the checkpoint camera activated.
  8. The archive catalogue lists the recovered notebooks under one case number.
  9. The abandoned theater across the street stayed dark after midnight.
  10. A grey envelope rested beneath the reception ledger.
  11. A neighbor reported hearing the generator restart before dawn.
  12. The team agreed to honor the original chain-of-custody notes.
  13. The witness identified the corner cafe as a favourite meeting place.
  14. The maintenance log separates material costs from labor hours.
  15. Analysts recognize the same scratch pattern on both access panels.
  16. The narrow service gap measures roughly one metre across.

Evening copy

  1. A second form records the color of the emergency seal beside the loading bay.
  2. The surveyor placed a tripod at the centre of the rear courtyard.
  3. Investigators analyze the tire impressions before comparing them with the cast.
  4. Archivists organise the duplicate photographs by room and camera angle.
  5. The night supervisor documented erratic behavior around the locked stairwell.
  6. A steel shutter provides an added layer of defense for the records room.
  7. The replacement driver was travelling north when dispatch called.
  8. The evidence catalogue assigns a separate reference to each recovered key.
  9. The theater marquee showed no fresh damage after the storm.
  10. A grey cable emerged from the conduit behind the panel.
  11. Another neighbor saw the service van leave shortly after noon.
  12. Supervisors agreed to honour the witness's request for a quiet interview.
  13. The technician marked the blue screwdriver as his favorite bench tool.
  14. The invoice lists labor separately from replacement parts.
  15. Reviewers recognize the same numbering style on both labels.
  16. The trench is almost one meter deep beside the fence.
Recovered spelling codebook

Read the 32 numbered carrier sentences in order. For each position, use the matching pair below: the left spelling represents 0 and the right spelling represents 1. The 16-pair codebook repeats exactly once. Group the resulting bits into four 8-bit ASCII bytes.

  1. color / colour
  2. center / centre
  3. analyze / analyse
  4. organize / organise
  5. behavior / behaviour
  6. defense / defence
  7. traveling / travelling
  8. catalog / catalogue
  9. theater / theatre
  10. gray / grey
  11. neighbor / neighbour
  12. honor / honour
  13. favorite / favourite
  14. labor / labour
  15. recognize / recognise
  16. meter / metre
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    About the technique
    
            
    Spelling-Variant Steganography
    
            
    Spelling-variant steganography uses a shared set of reviewed orthographic alternatives as symbolic states. The visible text can remain readable, but successful decoding depends on exact codebook membership, carrier order, and preservation of the original spellings through editors, normalization, spell-check, and autocorrect.
    
            
    Read the related field guide →
    
        
    

        
    
            
    Questions
    
            
    Frequently asked
    
                            
    
                    What is spelling-variant steganography?
                    
    It is a linguistic hidden-information technique in which predefined alternative spellings are mapped to symbols such as binary 0 and 1 under a shared codebook and carrier order.
    
                
    
                            
    
                    Do spelling variants always mean the same thing?
                    
    No. Some apparent variants differ by region, style guide, grammatical role, or meaning. A deterministic channel should use only pairs reviewed for the exact context in which they appear.
    
                
    
                            
    
                    Why can spell-check or autocorrect destroy the message?
                    
    Those tools can normalize one spelling to another, replacing carrier states while leaving the visible sentence understandable.