A 10x9 Hidato puzzle with a cipher

Question

_{rot18(A se zgfwkldq jwsddq tsv sl ujwslafy hmrrdwk kg zghwxmddq sl kgew hgafl A sulmsddq kzgo aehjgnwewfl dgd)}

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You might note that something is off about the following Hidato puzzle. Well, I guess in a way, there is nothing off about it. The only thing is, there is a cipher at the end of the puzzle. Don't worry, this does tie into the Hidato, but you will still have to decipher it to get the green checkmark, as well as solve the Hidato fully. Good luck! (okay hopefully this is a valid Hidato unlike last time)

The goal of Hidato: To fill the grid with a series of consecutive numbers adjacent to each other orthogonally or diagonally. All tiles are required to be filled in.

1	7				43			50
8		5		20	41		48
			16			40
	13		22		39		53
12			24		29		55
81							56
		33	31		36		59
	84					65		61
	87			75	74	66
		90	77				70

Note:

R1C5 R4C3 R1C4 R1C4 R5C5 R3C1 R1C3 R2C5 R2C1 R3C1 R1C5 R4C5 R1C1 R1C5 R5C3 R4C3 R2C5 R1C1 R1C3 R3C5 R5C3 R3C4 R3C5 R6C4 R6C4 R5C1 R2C3 R3C1 R4C5 R3C1 R5C1 R5C1 R2C5 R1C1 R5C2 R2C3 R1C1 R5C3 R5C5 R1C3 R2C3 R2C3 R3C3 R2C2 R1C1 R3C2 R5C2 R5C5 R4C3 R3C5 R2C1 R1C1 R4C4 R2C3 R1C1 R5C3 R3C3 R3C5 R1C5 R2C3 R2C5 R2C1 R1C1 R2C5 R2C5 R4C3 R3C1 R4C2 R3C4 R1C4 R4C3 R4C4 R2C3 R3C1 R5C3 R2C5 R2C1 R2C3 R1C3 R3C5 R2C5 R3C5 R1C4 R2C3

Answer 1

The intended answer is probably:

Sorry if this was not a fun puzzle. I will take any feedback you have and use that to improve in the future

The solved grid looks as follows. Red cells show interchangeable numbers which could partially be filled in by decoding the cipher.

To solve the grid, start with numbers that clearly only have one place to go:

Next focus on the right side of the grid. There is only one way to get from 44 to 47. After filling in the missing numbers, the rightmost column can only be filled one way without getting problems with empty cells:

Now both in the left top part and the right bottom part of the grid there is only one way left to fill in the remaining numbers. The top left is fairly trivial, in the bottom right the thing to notice is that 61 has to be connected to 65 going above 65. Not doing so leaves not enough space for connecting 70 in two directions:

From this point on everything falls into place very easily and we get the full grid.

The coding used is a simple alphabetic substitution, where 1 = a, 2 = b, etc