Leon Battista Alberti as author of \textit{Hypnerotomachia poliphili} (Q2361304)

This paper presents what it terms ``arithmogrammatical'' considerations as evidence of Alberti's authorship of the novel cited in the title. Here is an example that the article labels ``obvious'': according to the scheme that the author uses to associate letters with numbers, the two words ``Hypnerotomachia'' and ``poliphili'' encode as 71 and 56, respectively. The paper explains, ``The ratio \(71:41\) is also a rational convergent to \(\sqrt3:1\) (see [the author, ``Proportional design in L. B. Alberti's Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini'', Architectural Res. Q. 3, No. 3, 259--270 (1999; \url{doi:10.1017/S1359135500002086}), p. 66]). This means that a line of length 112 divided into parts of lengths 71 and 41 is divided in the ratio \(\sqrt3:1\). This is a geometric mean cut. The half-length, 56, is an arithmetic mean cut. The numbers 71 and 56 are related in this way.'' To the author, this suggests Alberti's authorship, since ``Alberti made frequent use of rational convergents to \(\sqrt3\) in his architectural works''.