CICADA 303 is inspired by Cicada 3301, an internet puzzle mystery that began with a 2012 4chan post asking for “highly intelligent individuals” and sending solvers through layers of cryptography, steganography, hidden web content, real-world clues, and privacy/anonymity themes. The Cicada 303 geocache series echoes that style with hidden image data, audio spectrograms, obscure ciphers, and staged links. For more background, see the overview on Wikipedia, NPR’s article “The Internet’s Cicada: A Mystery Without An Answer”, the community documentation at Uncovering Cicada Wiki, and LEMMiNO’s video page “Cicada 3301: An Internet Mystery”.