Very cool rundown of the approach to trying to decode this. FWIW there is also a significant archive of information about the format here, including information about the scrambling: https://code.google.com/p/puz/wiki/FileFormat
Indeed, staggering how patient and determined some people can be. I love this line when asked by his friend if he would be able to reverse-engineer this scrambling algorithm:
"My response was: maybe. Hard to say, but I'm willing to try. Privately, though, my reaction was THIS IS MY DREAM PROJECT AND THERE IS NO WAY I'M NOT SPENDING ALL AVAILABLE FREE TIME ON THIS."
yeah, i found that extremely helpful when writing the acrosslite module for a crossword format converter. i decided not to bother with scrambled grids for the moment, though, since they are a very acrosslite-specific feature; once the project progresses a bit further i'll go back and add them in.
"My response was: maybe. Hard to say, but I'm willing to try. Privately, though, my reaction was THIS IS MY DREAM PROJECT AND THERE IS NO WAY I'M NOT SPENDING ALL AVAILABLE FREE TIME ON THIS."