A bold claim to make, but interesting nevertheless. Did you ever do a writeup on that? I'm not into it myself (I'm not smart enough for puzzles like that), but I can imagine there's obsessive communities around it that would love to know more about this lead.
I never did a writeup because it seemed to me that the theories may have been true that Cicada3301 was a government program to recruit talent. I didn't want to dox the guy publicly and I also didn't want to piss anyone off at a three-letter agency. This is actually the first time I've ever mentioned this in public, but so much time has passed since the program was active that I think it's probably OK at this point.
