Hello, thank you for playing.
I am sorry to hear it has been a frustrating experience for you. I just looked into the problems you described and there are issues with the second puzzle in terms of discoverability and solveability.
The personal notes document should give you access to a 2-tiered hint system (first a nudge, then spelling it out) and afaik the puzzle should always be solvable, though of course you might have found a new bug.
There also is an in-game bug reporting tool (Indicident Report, e.g. on the desktop) that would provide me with additional context for figuring out what went wrong in you game.
Thank your for writing this up, it is very helpful.