I realise this may sound very conspiracy theorist-y so please forgive that but does anyone else see a very strong relation to the Cicada 3301 organisation? The last two paragraphs especially made me think of the 3301 challenges released in the past few years.<p>&quot;the mystical system in which meaning is derived from the numerical value of letters&quot;....&quot;symbols don’t represent just words and letters, they stand for numbers too&quot;<p>I had a play about with the challenges when they were released and throughtout them were strange runes&#x2F;ciphertext which could be both used as letters and numbers. I have done a fair few CTFs before but I have never seen anything like the Cicada challenges in terms of combining maths and language in such a way - how prominetly primes featured or how insanely well words and there numeric meaning seemed to align. The reason I immediately thought of them after reading the article is because I remember thinking while looking at the challenges that no one could come up with such an intricate and interconnected mathematical ciphertext system without some special (and as yet unknown&#x2F;unpublished) &quot;new way of calculating&quot;.<p>Not to mention all the secrecy around Cicada and the only rumors or supposed leaks from them suggest a secret organisation with a similar philosophy to the Oculists.