On the Look Up of Ed Balls

Dem balls in the gameplay room!

  • If the frame is not blue, you’re looking at a different module.
  • The letters are E, D, B, A, L, and S, but they are encoded by a reversible affine cipher.
  • To disarm this module, undo the transformation to return the letters to their original form and enter the message “ED BALLS.”
  • Pressing an incorrect button will result in a strike and reset your input, but will not cause the buttons to change.

Using Affine Ciphers

An affine cipher is determined by two variables A and B. Letters are encoded as follows:

  1. Convert a letter to its alphabetical position, called x.
  2. Compute the value Ax + B, and add or subtract 26 until the result is between 1 and 26.
  3. The final number is the alphabetic position of the encoded letter.

When attempting to decrypt an affine cipher, the following fact may help:

Any sequence of equally spaced letters (for example, “E, L, S”) will encode to letters that are also equally spaced, wrapping around from Z to A if necessary.

A=Affine Table
1ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ
3CFILORUXADGJM PSVYBEHKNQTWZ
5EJOTYDINSXCHM RWBGLQVAFKPUZ
7GNUBIPWDKRYFM TAHOVCJQXELSZ
9IRAJSBKTCLUDM VENWFOXGPYHQZ
11KVGRCNYJUFQBM XITEPALWHSDOZ
15ODSHWLAPETIXM BQFUJYNCRGVKZ
17QHYPGXOFWNEVM DULCTKBSJARIZ
19SLEXQJCVOHATM FYRKDWPIBUNGZ
21UPKFAVQLGBWRM HCXSNIDYTOJEZ
23WTQNKHEBYVSPM JGDAXUROLIFCZ
25YXWVUTSRQPONM LKJIHGFEDCBAZ