Yup that wasn't hard at all. Also, security researchers / consultants / ___hats solve these kinds of puzzles all the time for their work and hobby. Friends I have in that business are
insanely good at this sort of thing. Because apparently people
always think they're so clever. One told me on multiple cases doing whitehat security consulting they studied the desk+office of the sysadmin for a bit (no post-its), pull some Sherlock Holmes magic (I don't know really) and guessed the password in 5-10 tries (no I didn't quite believe it either, but otoh this guy really doesn't like bragging nor had any reason to lie about).
Oh and if I understand the number scheme correctly:
> integer sum of the digits on either side of each digit in the Italian number
that means, when the number is "otto", meaning 8, the "digits on either side" are 7 and 9, which when you sum them, equal 7 + 9 = (8 - 1) + (8 + 1) = 8 + 8 = 16, so it's really a complicated way of saying "double that number" ... :-)