I was hanging out in the Puzzing.SE lounge (the beanbag chairs are heaven) when some random person walked up. They said, "I love this place! Would you try my puzzle?" Their puzzle was a cryptex (inspired by The Da Vinci Code). I found the puzzle to be quite fun, truly showing their appreciation of the high-quality puzzle(r)s on this site. I have reproduced the puzzle and rules below so that you can try as well.
Rules
- Each vertical strip (a column of letters in the below grid) is circular; i.e. it loops around from bottom to top
- Your goal is to rotate the strips (each individually) so that each row has a word in it
- Each strip has been rotated from its original position
- All words are related
- The words are not all the same length; words that are shorter than 8 letters have nonsense letters padding their ends
$$ \texttt{| E | A | R | M | A | R | K | S |} \\\texttt{| S | E | D | U | P | T | R | N |} \\\texttt{| V | A | A | P | B | O | G | M |} \\\texttt{| W | C | N | A | L | E | C | Y |} \\\texttt{| G | T | O | U | T | E | A | U |} \\\texttt{| R | I | S | D | G | L | S | Y |} \\\texttt{| P | O | I | E | E | L | D | Y |} \\\texttt{| H | I | R | D | D | U | R | S |} \\\texttt{| G | I | S | T | H | E | A | Y |} \\\texttt{| C | P | R | A | T | E | R | T |} $$
Their suggested method of solving is to copy out the columns onto actual strips of paper, then tape in separate loops around a rolling pin. This lets you physically spin the columns :)
Hint 1 (word lengths)
There are three 8-letter words, two 7-letter words, four 6-letter words, and one 5-letter word.
