@QuasiTemporal@wandering.shop not quite that far. Only loosely inspired, really. I've long been fascinated with the idea of there being a story built around a comment, or in this case comments plural, in the margins. I think I have a blurb in my pinned posts if you're curious. One of my close friends has a doctorate in mathematics, and I was his roommate for a bit while he was still in school. It must have been during that time that someone solved it, or at least claimed to have, and he explained it to me. So it was just something that floated around my head for a long time as potential story material.