Codebreaking puzzle- Breach at Whitehall

The Game Room
21

I’m not a Unix geek and don’t have time to learn vi, but based on quick googling, I surmise that that command sorts the list of words by your third column (the one with “GO,” “BE,” and so on.) Is that correct? If so, I did that in a spreadsheet, and enlightenment has not ensued.

Would someone please talk to me as though I’m 10 years old, and provide a more obvious, basic clue?

22

What do some of the codewords have in common?

23

With one or two exceptions, they form pairs which share the same first two letters, and they also form different pairs that share the same last two letters.

24

Never mind, I got it.