Great find and write up. This year if I remember correctly 40+ people got the check, ~1000 have an account at the bank. I got mine this year, an exercise I revisit every few years since 2012 to learn a new programming lang or approach had a newer update that made it have 2 offbyone errors. I had extra time this year so went to the beginning of the chapter to attempt an open problem and in the preliminaries another off by two error. I was quite surprised.
Really made me appreciate how unlikely it is to find an error. It feels as if it was planned just for me to find it. Just like the author studied cryptography and then decided to do some exercises to hone his skills, an unlikely journey towards a check.