Thanks for the encouragement (and also to all the upvoters).

Would it go in Tutorials if I'm more presenting info on Crytpograms than on Perl? Don't get me wrong; this is going to be a VERY Perl-centric series (I'm not coding in C). Still, I'm a self-admitted not-very-good Perler. I expect the meaty Perl stuff will come from the "you can do better" part of "How I did it - you can do better".