Ok, I think I see my mistake... I just went back to the original comment, and I realize now that I had read "a single master seed" as "master seed
phrase" and not "a seed used to prime a RNG" ... Meaning, I thought the idea being proposed was that the puzzles were initially created by, like, using some off-the-shelf wallet software to automatically create a new wallet, complete with a BIP-39 seed phrase and a list of associated private keys, and then changing/masking those private keys to make the puzzles' keys, which (of course) would have
disassociated them all from the original BIP-39 seed phrase... And I couldn't for the life of me figure out how
that would be easier than just generating them all the way you show above...
So, I am dumb, just not the way I'd feared

Personally, if I were the creator, I would use this simple python script.You could straight-up import all them keys from 1 to 160 into Electrum right from the command line. Move all the bread in two clicks, no cap. Me? I’d use a Social Security Number as the seed, toss in ‘SatoshiNakamotoPuzzle’ plus the puzzle number, and bam, we locked in. I wouldn't even lie that I used a wallet.