I*m sorry, but I haven't found a way to determine what version of gnupg I am running. Just in case things got confused, I am not the thread opener, my version of gnupg is not whats been stated in the opening post but rather whatever is current on Arch Linux: Linux 6.0.11-arch1-1
I ran gpgsm --version though which returns this:
gpgsm (GnuPG) 2.2.40

After years of using S/MIME I ran into a strange situation importing my new S/MIME certs to Kleopatra yesterday which ultimately led me to this thread.
My case is slightly different because my original passwords were short (2w7g9r1e and 2y8m7i5t), but it feels related so I thought I'd share nevertheless.