I think it is legitimate to argue that the process here does not fit the usual definition of "brute forcing". Traditionally, brute forcing would refer to something like a dictionary attack, where an algorithm tries to match all possible combinations of words to eg. find a password. Here, the approach was more common sense based, using historical records and possible error sources to narrow down the possibility space enormously in advance, try out a much more limited set of options within that space until you got a result that made sense, and finally validate those results using historical records. It's the exact same kind of "brute forcing" a human expert would do.
If the final set of possibilities is astronomically smaller than a naive one, calling the whole process a "brute force exercise" draws attention to an astronomically insignificant part.
I'm aware. Locating a single probable key is exactly not that.
Going through a list of possibilities one by one is bruee forcing.
I think it is legitimate to argue that the process here does not fit the usual definition of "brute forcing". Traditionally, brute forcing would refer to something like a dictionary attack, where an algorithm tries to match all possible combinations of words to eg. find a password. Here, the approach was more common sense based, using historical records and possible error sources to narrow down the possibility space enormously in advance, try out a much more limited set of options within that space until you got a result that made sense, and finally validate those results using historical records. It's the exact same kind of "brute forcing" a human expert would do.
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If the final set of possibilities is astronomically smaller than a naive one, calling the whole process a "brute force exercise" draws attention to an astronomically insignificant part.
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