I did read the article. It wasn&#x27;t clear that you were referring to that specific paragraph.<p>&gt; I mean, if the result of a 2008 paper is crucial, you&#x27;d think the guy would have just mentioned this fact.<p>Maybe he did? <i>Or</i> maybe it is just not crucial.∎<p>The article just states &quot;The link was immediately recognised as a crucial step in Mochizuki&#x27;s grand strategy.&quot;...that is just the writer&#x27;s opinion.<p>Linking these papers to topology is trivial. The word &quot;topological&quot; alone occurs 111 times in the first paper. A lot of what I&#x27;m reading in this article, and others, is people complaining about not understanding something that they (probably&#x2F;apparently) have not even read.