Thank you for the offer of 100+ prodding questions. I had a good friend read over the seed phrase and see if he saw different words or different orders and we couldn't come up with anything.

I'm pretty sure it is user error. I just verified today that the coins are still in the wallet. I just can't get in.

The purpose of the article is to have people double check their seed phrases before depositing crypto into a wallet to avoid the same expensive lesson that I learned.