🧵 Hidden Curio Index

Anonymous at Tue, 5 Mar 2024 12:06:22 UTC No. 16058063

Back in 2019, someone in an /x/ web mysteries thread brought up the “Hidden Curio Index,” a wiki for bizarre computer programs and such. Apparently the creator revoked access from the users to keep the mystery.

Someone claimed that the creator hides puzzles around the Internet as access points to the wiki. This person later posted an update messaging a friend who had found one of these puzzles, an image of a matrix to the 29th power. When calculated, this gave a matrix containing the 57th, 58th, and 59th Fibonacci numbers.

One of the wiki screenshots referenced a 4chan post from 21 January 2011 containing a list of .onion links. Because the 4plebs /x/ archive only goes back to 2013, people could not check whether the referenced thread existed, so many thought the Hidden Curio Index must be a LARP by whoever posted the screenshots.

Recently, someone uploaded a lot of pre-2013 4chan threads to old.sage.moe. I searched there and could not find any mention of the Hidden Curio Index or the 2011 post it referenced, so either the original post was deleted/not archived, or this is all a LARP.

Picrel is first wiki screenshot.

Original thread:
https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/23690888/#q23690936

Thread with second screenshot, puzzle image:
https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/26654102/#26654102

Later threads:
https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/26738800/#q26738800
https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/27890936/#q27890936
https://archive.vn/7HNJB
https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/28528371/#q28528371

Reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetMysteries/comments/jwqy0y/does_anyone_have_a_source_for_these_images_i_cant/