Wait a minute, is it somehow clear that you're supposed to be looking for a near-miss? If I came across this in my line of inquiry, I would assume that my previous step was wrong, and I'd have dropped the puzzle eventually.
Nah, I didn't actually do the Cicada 3301. I was just joking around. It seemed unlikely anyone was going to post an interesting math problem, so I decided to have a little fun. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8549204
