Cicada 3301: A Castle built upon Sand December 16, 2024

On January 4 2012, the internet saw the birth of one of the most elaborate, complex, and intriguing puzzles to do date. An anonymous user going by 3301 sought intelligent individuals. For what purpose? Nobody knew. Who was behind it? Nobody knew that either. Until now.

CASE STATUS:PARTIALLY SOLVED

I am confident that as of today, we are very close to figuring out who Cicada 3301 actually is. After calling in a good friend of mine and analyzing the data, we came up with the following theory:

Cicada 3301 is a single person, and probably immature also. The main point of reference for the first point are the timings and dates of Cicada's posts, which do not span the entire day/week. We also think that realistic places of residency for Cicada are either coast (east/west) of the United States or Canada, the United Kingdom, or mainland Europe. Our second point—that Cicada is probably immature—then comes from the fact that we are able to ground our theory/theories on solid footing: Cicada made a lot of minor and dumb mistakes, such as spelling, grammar, etc. If Cicada were multiple people—or if the sole owner of Cicada was more cunning—these mistakes would not be a thing.

I, personally, think Cicada lives on the west coast of North America, specifically the Pacific Northwest. Though, due to certain mistakes Cicada made in their posts—mostly grammar and spelling mistakes—I think Cicada isn't actually from that area—or from any English-speaking country for that matter. Instead, I think Cicada is actually from somewhere in Central Europe, specifically some Germanic state—like Germany, Denmark, Austria, etc.—as some of the mistakes Cicada made (I'm talking about grammar and spelling—not forgetting a word or two) would've been correct if the text were German.

Corrections, Clarifications, etc.
Correction for:
The GitHub Repository
In the video, I mention a GitHub repository. However, that doesn't work as of right now. Because of this, I have moved the investigative material over to here.
Sources
Nov. 24, 2024
Near, Q

This was originally in a GitHub respository but that doesn't work, so it was moved.

May 19, 2018
LEMMiNO
YouTube
Sep. 05, 2021
S. Flannagan
Grunge
Fandom
Uncovering Cicada Wiki

This wiki documents the puzzles quite well.

#9
Cicada 3301 is accused of hacking

A Chilean news organization accused Cicada of hacking, to which Cicada promptly issued a response.

Apr. 18, 2012
Pastebin

Notice the British spelling of the word "organisations", as well as a missing "we" in the last sentence.

#10
Cicada 3301 is accused of cyberterrorism
Jul. 28, 2015
Pastebin

Here, too, Cicada uses the British spelling of the word "organisations".

#11
The leaked email
#11.1
Untitled
Feb. 26, 2012
Pastebin

This is the first version of the email to be leaked. Notice the large amount of mistakes: This is not the actual email but merely a "depersonalized" version; every version of the email had unique punctuation, sentence structures, etc.—so that Cicada could identify potential leakers—which this removes entirely. Curious that whoever leaked this knew about that.

#11.2
Untitled
Apr. 23, 2024
Pastebin

This is one of the unique versions of the email.

Fandom
Uncovering Cicada Wiki

This is another version of the email.

#11.4
Untitled
Pastebin

I sadly cannot remember how I found this version, but I do believe this was sent to 845145127.com website.

Apr. 23, 2024
u/ymgve
Reddit

A Reddit user shared this version of the email, which they themselves received ~11 years prior. According to them, they have not received any other messages after, despite applying for a membership.

Jan. 10, 2012
habitres
YouTube
Project Gutenberg

This website originally featured a countdown to Jan. 09, 2012, being then replaced by coordinates before finally being replaced with whitespaces.

#14.1
Archive

This is an archive of an archive of the site.