User blog comment:ArtismScrub/Hyper-Alpha Notation Part III: Full Circle/@comment-30754445-20180307182140/@comment-30754445-20180309140129

I know that's what commonly stated, but I'm skeptical.

Is there any evidence that Bowers had a clear vision for how pentational arrays work, before people asked him whether he intended to use the climbing method? The fact that he answered that question with "yeah, I meant the more powerful version" after the fact hardly constitutes evidence.

Actually, it is questionable whether the original intuitive version that Bowers envisioned even reached ζ₀. The one thing we do know for certain, is that the pentational array X↑↑↑Y & Z must be a structure of X↑↑↑Y Z's. Nobody knows how to get to ζ₀ (let alone Γ₀) in a way which is consistent with this requirement, so it is doubtful that Bowers managed to do it by imagination alone.

I mean, it's possible, but it is not very likely.