If you’ve ever played through the PSA Missions, you’re probably familiar with the Tic-Tac-Toe Code. Inspired by the famous Pigpen Cipher, this secret language is often used to encode PSA and EPF Messages.
Several of these messages appear in the PSA Missions and, without practise, they can be a pain to decipher. In this short guide I’ll be showing you how to essentially become fluent Tic-Tac-Toe Code so that you can quickly and efficiently both decode messages, and write your own!
First things first, the decoder that you’re given in the PSA Missions is not very useful. While this clearly shows you which symbol represents which letter, it doesn’t explain the relationship between them and, as a result, makes it a lot harder to remember than it needs to be.
A better decoder can be found in The F.I.S.H. (page 13), the EPF Handbook (page 2), and the Secret Agent Handbook (page 34). This diagram made of three tic-tac-toe boards is how the code was originally designed to be cracked (and is also a lot easier to remember!).
Memorising this diagram is the first step to memorising the code. From here on, if you can’t remember a specific letter, you can always turn back to the diagram to figure it out. That being said, try to avoid physically writing it down: you want to be able to do all this in your head.
With the diagram memorised, you’ll quickly run into a problem. While it’s easy to mentally work out the first five or six letters of the alphabet, it takes way too long to work out anything else. What you need now is a few reference points. These will help break the diagram into smaller, more easily navigable chunks. I’d start by memorising the symbols for the letters A, J, and S, splitting the diagram into the three main sections. For each letter you decipher, you can now start counting from the closest letter before it, rather than from the start of the alphabet.
This will speed up the process for sure, but to really make the most of the grid, you also need to know the symbols for E, N and W. Having all six of these letters memorised will ensure that you never have to count more than four letters from a reference point to figure out a letter. Most of these are pretty common letters anyway, so it’s good to have them memorised.
Now, it’s just a matter of practising so that you become familiar with some of the other letters. Write out sentences and pangrams, use your reference points and try to work up speed. Inevitably, you’ll find yourself forming tricks to help yourself remember some of the other letters that pop up frequently. I personally remember that the symbols for ‘J’, ‘L’ and ‘r’ are all shaped like the letters themselves (and all have a cross in the middle).
I also find the letter ‘h’ quite easy to remember as its symbol (П) can actually be seen in both its capital and lowercase form.
As you learn more letters, you can use them as new reference points. This means that you don’t need to memorise every letter—just enough so that you can write at a steady pace. As a side note, the Box Critters cipher fits onto the same grid, meaning that you could learn it in much the same way. There’s a bit more to think about, but it’s definitely possible!
So what do you think? Are you going to learn either of these codes? Do you have any other tricks to remembering letters? Feel free to leave your thoughts and theories in the comments below, and until next time,
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