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Meursault, re-read crosswhit99's post. It does not say that the displacements all are in the same direction, just that all are the same magnitude backwards or forward; e.g. REJOB could decode to SDIPA. SFIPA, etc. So there a lot more than 19 possibilities.

I agree with what you say in general about this sort of puzzle, Wintonian. But the way to balance it more evenly would be to give the solver a little more assistance in the early stages. Several solvers on this thread have commented that the early stages took far too long...really this is a big drawback : it puts off some existing solvers from continuing with numeric puzzles, and deters others from ever starting.

Thanks wintonian - now finished, and agree there is an 'obvious' and unambiguous ending to this. It also identifies the thematic word quicker (although the other way works). Tough but fair, imo.

Yes buzzb, though using the wordfinder does speed up the process of searching considerably. In fact my hint was a simplification of the situation as it didn't include the possibility of the same letters in matching positions in the title and thematic word. Given that the cipher is systematic and that each digit represents any of two or three letters, then the required shift (if any) from title to thematic word has to be in the range 9 - 13. So for a shift of 9, enter [IR][ENW][AJS][OFX][BKT] into the wordfinder to get no possible words. For a shift of 10 enter [HR][EOY][JT][EOY][BLV] etc.

In the end, I found Wintonian's advice on the cipher was the most useful. A very obvious, systematic translation. And I think you'd said that solving Grid A gave you an inkling as to how it would be. This was also most useful, since during the solving process I'm sure we all had tabulated the letters to the numbers 1-26. So, the first thing was to try that list as a cipher. Not to be, but it wasn't far from the answer.

I'm sorry if this appears rude or ungrateful, but some of the other hints proved to be a distraction.

The excellent start to the year continues with this fine puzzle. Very tough and for a while almost necessarily tedious, especially for someone who doesn't understand spreadsheets or Excel, but the unambiguous and appropriate denouement made the effort worthwhile.

I can't quite see any consistency in your choices, crosswhit99. Shouldn't a shift of 9 give [IRA] [ENV] [AJS] [OFX] [BKS]? Similarly your second string looks faulty to me.

By using a property of the digits 0 to 9 I devised a systematic way of deciding which digits had three letters and which two. This has given me a unique word, but I cannot believe it is thematic. It's an anagram of a national symbol.

I can see a thematic word that might be the right one so perhaps I will work backwards to get the alpha-numeric code.

Meursault, yes, I agree that this puzzle could be very time-consuming at the start, particularly if you miss how A, E and some other numbers being factors of other numbers limits the values they can take. It’s tempting to begin with 27ac and 29dn, trying to solve for A and P, and then feed these values into 1ac and 25ac, but there are just too many combinations to make this manageable.

The thematic word does have a couple of anagrams but they relate to feudalism and rowing boats. If E=5 then shifting by 9 gives 14 (N) and 23 (W), similarly B=2, K=11, T=20
(The thematic word is also in plain sight !)

The wordfinder website is totally unnecessary and some of the so-called hints on this forum fall into the same category; you could say they are deliberately misleading.