A few years ago, my cousin 
We all love a great mystery, that’s why we all love those detective stories. Well most of us anyways. But when a real life mystery surfaces, it is hundred times as exciting.
The mystery of Cicada 3301 is another one such mystery and something that still remains unsolved but the interesting part is that there are some people who claim to have been in contact with the organisation but still the purpose of the group remains a mystery.
Cicada 3301
The story of Cicada 3301 begins on 4th January, 2012 when someone posted a puzzle on an internet forum stating that they were looking for ‘highly intelligent individuals’ and that solving the puzzle would lead them to the secretive group.
The puzzle consisted of several hidden messages in photos, metadata of photos, a book and required people to decipher codes, solve riddles, recognise patterns, and also to travel to actual physical locations around the world to retrieve further clues.
After about a month, the Cicada group posted yet another image to announce that they had found who they were looking for and that there would be future chances for people who didn’t make it all the way through.
Then after a year, they came back with a second puzzle and kickstarted another wild chase among enthusiasts. This time too, it was much of the same as last year. But this time around, they didn’t announce that they had got who they were looking for. They simply vanished.
After a year, on January 4, 2014, it was time for a third round of puzzles, again stating that they wanted to recruit ‘intelligent individuals’ and so, another quest began among those who wanted to join the group.
This time, the puzzles led to a strange book called the Liber Primus which had encrypted Runic texts that needed to be decrypted to go further onto the next steps. But out of the 74 pages, only 19 were successfully translated.
This time too, there was no final announcement from Cicada that they had found who they were looking for. People expected a fourth round as 2015 began but Cicada didn’t return and in 2016, a fresh clue from Cicada stated that “Liber Primus is the way”, probably meaning that the book needs to be decrypted in full first.
Now it has been over four years that we’ve got any more rounds of puzzles leading some people to believe that maybe they were done for good. Some others think that the book still hasn’t been decrypted fully and they won’t return until it is.
Questions, Questions, Questions
Whenever there is something shrouded in mystery, it is obvious that there will be questions. And a lot of them at that. The same goes for Cicada 3301.
No one knows what exactly this group is, who are involved, how many of them and most importantly, what is their purpose. Yes, their purpose is to recruit ‘intelligent people’ but to what end?
Many have speculated that based on the nature of the puzzles, the group could be looking for codebreakers, cryptographers, linguists, steganographers and individuals who are highly concerned with data privacy.
Many also think that this could simply be a fancy of recruitment by government intelligent agencies like NSA, CIA, FBI or even agencies of other countries like MI6. Still, no one can be sure. It’s no wonder that Cicada 3301 has been listed as one of the top 5 eeriest, unsolved mysteries on the internet.