that contain the coefficient of a polynomial which has to be evaluated to get the message. This one contains two extra twists: firstly the variable substituted is not adjacent integers, secondly you use punctuation variables in such a confusing manner that it's not at all obvious which variable is used for its original special purpose.

The truly beautiful thing is how there are no control characters in the string encoding the coefficients (and it's even one character shorter than it should be). I don't understand how you did that, because if I try to modify this japh, then the string I get is full of control characters, making the code much longer:

$%=2,$"=6;$;=ord"\c?";print+map{$%*="57 @_[4
]";$=-=$=;$=*=$%%=$;,$=+=ord,$=%=$;for@_;chr
$=}@_=split//,"'QV\bjC\cu-\am\cy\cr#i\"HHuM\cb`w,\t_4"
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(Sorry for the way I messed up the string at the end of the first line, I don't have patience to fix that now.)

Update: striked out the part about the polynomial being too short, that's my mistake.