Solution: Interlude: Mathematics

Answer: WERE NUMBER ONE

Written by Mike Sylvia

In this interlude, solvers are prompted to assign integer values to the thirteen variables A-M. Upon doing this, they are returned a different set of thirteen integers. This new set is the result of multiplying the thirteen given values with a hidden set of values in the 1-26 range and then sorting the results from lowest to highest.

There are several ways to choose starting values in a way that allows for recovering the original order — among others, solvers could set A-M to be different primes greater than 26, set them to be 1, 100, 10000, 1000000, etc., or just set each value in turn to -1.

The hidden factors turn out to be (23, 5, 18, 5, 14, 21, 13, 2, 5, 18, 15, 14, 5), which is A1-Z26 for this department's monster, WERE NUMBER ONE.