The columnar encryption scheme scrambles the letters in a message (or plaintext) using a keyword as illustrated in the following example: Suppose BATBOY is the keyword and our message is MEET ME BY THE OLD OAK TREE. Since the keyword has 6 letters, we write the message (ignoring spacing and punctuation) in a grid with 6 columns, padding with random extra letters as needed:

Here, we've padded the message with NTH. Now the message is printed out by columns, but the columns are printed in the order determined by the letters in the keyword. Since A is the letter of the keyword that comes first in the alphabet, column 2 is printed first. The next letter, B, occurs twice. In the case of a tie like this we print the columns leftmost first, so we print column 1, then column 4. This continues, printing the remaining columns in order 5, 3 and finally 6. So, the order the columns of the grid are printed would be 2, 1, 4, 5, 3, 6, in this case. This output is called the ciphertext, which in this example would be EYDEMBLRTHANMEKTETOEEOTH. Your job will be to recover the plaintext when given the keyword and the ciphertext.