Sequence alignment given two strings

Question

I have two sequences and I need to perform sequence alignment to determine all possible sequence alignments. I have created the matrix and managed to find 16 alignments.

I wanted to understand if I had correctly approached this because I need to provide all possible alignment sequences and then provide the best alignment sequence/sequences out of all the ones found, however, all my found sequences have a score of -9. I have provided 2 sequences I found below, and all 16 found sequences can be found in a pastebin link below since it made the post quite large.

I was wondering if someone could help me understand if I may have gone wrong or if I am missing some sequences since all of them have a score of -9. I do not think I have gone wrong during the matrix creation phase but I am unsure. I have asked for help from my tutor however he has been quite rude and reluctant to explain/help so I have decided to turn to the community for help and guidance. Would appreciate any insight into this. Thanks in advance.

Sequence strings:

ggaatggmeeff

gatge

Alignment matrix

Found sequences: Sequences with score.

1.  Score: -9
G   G   A   A   T   G   G   M   E   E   F   F

G   -   -   A   T   -   G   -   -   E   -   -

2. Score: -9
G   G   A   A   T   G   G   M   E   E   F   F

-   G   -   A   T   -   G   -   -   E   -   -

Answer 1

Your alignment score is low because your sequences are short and one is twice as long as the other. This inescapably introduces gaps in the alignment leading to a low alignment score. This alignment with a -9 score is still the optimal global alignment accordting to the Needleman Wunsch algorithm.