On-line riddle -- very cool, challenging

[rusty JEDI]

you need to use all 3 of the cranks with letters.

rJ

[BreakEvenPlayer]

Got it... Stuck on 15 but I think I'm just making it harder than it is.

[Duke]

If anyone is on 39 I'd like to hear how they got past #38. Not the answer, just some sort of hint at the method.

What I've looked at:

Various transformations on the capital letters in the hint, including (but not limited to) straight text-> numbers, various "nth occurrence" things on the grid using the "key" on the lower right to find the proper next letter and moving off the starting letter in the hinted direction based on the number that the original capital maps to, looking for straight clues in the grid (POLAND RULEZ was funny), starting with the highlighted X and moving around as per the key on the lower right based on the numbers created by turning the capitals in the hint to numbers as per the TIME FOR TEA hint thing, and guessing random strings.

I did all of these things using the lowercase letters as well. No actual words are popping out at me thus far, so I'm still plodding along.

I screwed with the image as much as possible, though I haven't yet turned it into straight binary looking for a clue in the file itself. This would be tough to do in a jpeg, though, so I doubt that that would be the answer. It's not a gif so it can't be a colormap clue like they used in the past, nor is it a psd so it can't be a layer clue.

I'm getting to the point where I might just give up on this thing since it's finally proven to be too tough for me. I've spent more time on #38 than on the rest of the puzzle combined. Whoever gets to 39 before me has my props.

~D