BL == N (mod P)
The solution to this problem requires a well known result in number theory that is probably expected of you for Putnam but not ACM competitions. It is Fermat's theorem that states
B(P-1) == 1 (mod P)
for any prime P and some other (fairly rare) numbers known as base-B pseudoprimes. A rarer subset of the base-B pseudoprimes, known as Carmichael numbers, are pseudoprimes for every base between 2 and P-1. A corollary to Fermat's theorem is that for any m
B(-m) == B(P-1-m) (mod P) .