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It took me a long time but I figured it out. What you have to is find the keyword which is facetious (taking the first letter of each word and the dash word taken as 1 word). You then had to put facetious as the start of the alphabet so you got: FACETIOUSBDGHJKLMNPQRUVWXYZ. You then change the numbers to this new alphabet so you get: t-w-e-n-t-y-t-w-o t-i-m-e-s e-i-g-h-t (5-23-4-18-5-25-5-23-7 5-6-17-4-9 4-6-12-13-5). Which is 22*8 which is 176.

Thanks mathguy. I see the original poster got the code wrong. The last part is 4612135, not as he posted. He also neglected to give the first line of the puzzle, which shows he’s a bit thick, as well as being ethically challenged. It reads “Alan is faced with a code, for which he is given a keyword clue”.

That points directly towards a keyword cipher, and would have saved people a lot of time.

Please see my thread headed CHEATING, just remember that nobody is obliged to give any answer to any question asked.

The only thing I’d ask is that you are polite if you are posting explaining why you aren’t answering any questions. I don’t want any slanging matches to referee.