Is it just me or is the expanding tower physically impossible?
It's possible, just very challenging. It's kinda meant to be a bit of a push to get the timings of crouch jumping down. A trick I used sometimes is just to hold a crouch and start moving in the direction of the next platform so it's not a matter of tapping the crouch button at the same time as the jump but letting go of it as you press for the jump. (fingers get tired running through it so many times in a day).
Hope this helps and thanks for playing!