Instead of throwing your phone out of frustration, you may use something else, in case you already have that. And that thing is the answer.
What was the hint?? In the email?
First-rate use of “whom” there. Thirty points to Gryffindor.
(Update: This post was flagged by my fellow users; I don’t believe that was fair. I wholeheartedly yield to the judgment of the staff.)
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damn really got me checkmated here! you win! I surrender! You’ve proven yourself to be an alpha with this one!
The groups of touching, white circles appear to have no left-to-right order. Once I solve the puzzle and alphaconvert the numbers in the white circles to letters, how do I arrange those letters? guesswork?
They are in order, look again.
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what about the 4 circle groups at the right of the puzzle? when I get to them, do I then go top to bottom?
Read the instructions - any circles that are adjacent are to be added together.
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Fun to do puzzle. It was difficult at first, and I tried bruteforce it. But after seeing first few spots where answer was certain I was slowly going towards the full answer and in the end made 1 mistake I didnt even notice, but the rest of letters were enough to get the answer.
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Yes, I understand that. My issue comes when I have all the letters, and I have to order them into 2 words. There has to be an order to each group of white circles. Is the order left to right and top to bottom, like this? 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3
(numbers represent the number of white circles in a group). I haven’t completely solved the puzzle, but I know for sure some of the letters and want to try and guess the word
It’s 11311132113, left to right, top to bottom.
I read them this way, but I get gibberish.
So I was doing it left to right and top to bottom starting on the left most column (so left to right supersedes). This was wrong. Instead, you need to read them left to right and top to bottom starting at the top row, where top to bottom supersedes.
I am confident my sums are correct
Yes it is left to right and 
, once I discovered the password word I smiled because I thought it is something more complicated like with puzzle 25 xD In my opinion its enough to know the first 5 letters to already guess the password because the first word is very obvious, and when you already have the first one, the second is even easier to guess!
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At first I thought that numbers greater than 9 could be used. The text does not clarify this issue. Fortunately, later I read the comments about it and I was able to direct it correctly. 
By the way, does anyone know who’s the guy sitting next to William Shatner?
If the desired solution uses only numbers less than or equal to 9 and there exists no solution of the board using at least one number greater than 9, then technically the instructions are not wrong. I don’t know if any solution of the latter kind exists.
PS They didn’t explicitly restrict us to using positive numbers or integers either. 
The puzzle asks you to solve the board according to the given rules, then determine the letters, then determine the final answer. If during that process you notice patterns that save you time and effort, great. But it’s frankly inappropriate to try to save yourself time and effort by getting/using information (from others) that isn’t in the puzzle instructions about (1) the number of words in the final answer and (2) the order in which the final answer’s letters appear on the board.
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“They also didn’t explicitly restrict us to using positive numbers or integers.”
No, but you can’t convert them to letters, which you can do with numbers greater than 9 or sums of numbers greater than 9 (less than or equal to 26).
“[…] then technically the instructions are not wrong.”
The challenge is to solve the puzzle, and the solution must comply with the rules provided. If there is ambiguity in the instructions or a necessary rule is omitted, then they are not correct. 