Dear Mark,

I’ve just discovered another of those bizarre things that convinces me that crop circles are far more mysterious than "just flattened corn."

Three background facts:

1) Supporters of the, it’s-all-a-hoax theory, usually credit the circle-making crew known as Team Satan as the makers of the fractal crop formations, in particular the Koch Snowflake/Star of David.

2) For certain, Team Satan was hired by Mitsubishi to make a representation of a car in the East Field, for a TV commercial.

                                        KOCH SNOWFLAKE  INSIDE-OUT KOCH

The inside-out version is constructed by subtracting triangles:

Now, you may have recognised that the Mitsubishi logo is the permutation at second from left. Yup - their logo is three red diamonds arranged exactly like that. (The three diamonds are from an ancient Japanese coat of arms, far older that the math of Helge von Koch

- so the car company didn’t contact the hoaxers because the gang had already made a star/snowflake that was related to their logo.)

What strikes me as really odd, is that Team Satan is said to have constructed the Koch snowflake/star crop circle a year before they made the Mitsubishi car. What are the odds of this coincidence? How unlikely that there would be a car logo hidden in the math. That there was, and that that particular company decide to commission a "crop car," and hired these particular guys - not a chance in Hell!

It would indeed be proof of their Satanic identity, if they had seen the future, and reverse-engineered the logo to fabricate the first star. A devilishly clever trick! (Following up later with the reverse Koch crop formation would be a brilliant but humanly possible, in-joke.)

Or, if we assume that the circles are made by a benevolent non human agency (ETs?), we should be prepared to accept They might have powers similar, or greater, than the Dark Side. This scenario feels like They are poking fun at Team Satan.

In fact I think this weirdness has just the flavour of what I would call cosmic humour. There are countless examples of this kind of thing weaving around, like Zen koans, through the circles mystery.