Sooooo sorry guys. There are no good excuses for me not trying to get back here sooner. Just to keep you in the loop, dog #1 got scheduled for a fairly serious operation at very short notice (she's fine now, just going through the rehab stuff) and I've felt the need to seek a new job... which, after a pretty gruelling 2-month application/interview process, I'll be starting on 19th February.
I was hoping to have this game wrapped up at least a week sooner than I'd scheduled... but when the call came for the dog op, I had to prioritise. Every moment that I haven't been trying to secure employment has been spent juggling 2 dogs who, until the New Year, couldn't be out of their cages together due to the risk of dog #1's leg being broken again. After I've had chance to catch up on any moderator developments, I'll back-track and see where people got to with their guesses, and post the resolution for you. You've been a great bunch of players, and I'm really sorry I let you all down.
(for the record, I did have computer issues at one point, and after 2 fresh Windows installs and about 3 days with Microsoft employees logged into my computer, they told me they didn't know why I couldn't connect to my account, only for me to find out a couple of weeks later that it was because of that general Microsoft account issue that affected users worldwide. Idiots. But that was before I had the dogmergency)