Here's another means of analysis, and why I'm sure my analysis in post #44, above, is correct.
A fundamental principle of a block and tackle is that the mechanical advantage is exactly equal to the ratio of the amount of rope you pull out of the tackle to the distance the load moves. This is conservation or work (energy), i.e., a force applied across a distance.
For example, for a simple, single overhead pulley, you pull down 1' and load is lifted 1'; no mechanical advantage. If you add a pulley to the load, and run the rope up through the overhead pulley, down through the load pulley, and back up to a becktet on the over head block, or to the ceiling, you now pull 2' of rope to raise the load 1'. Your mechanical advantage is 2:1, or 2. You do the same work, you just use 1/2 the force over twice the distance.
If we continue adding blocks to the load and ceiling, and reeve our rope as one would intuitively do, we continue to
add mechanical advantage. Four pulleys, you pull out 4' of line to raise the load 1', MA = 4. The second 2:1 added to the first 2:1.
In our case they've kept going, and didn't stop 'til they got to eight pulleys. You pull out 8' of rope to raise
the frame of the bottom blocks 1' , 8:1. Now, the twist is they've added a 2:1 mechanical advantage between our load and the bottom block. This halves the distance the load is raised for a given pull on the rope, so it multiplies the MA: it's now 2 x 8 = 16.