Indeed, that could also have been the point. Although it of course seemed quite strange at the time that they would publicly announce that they had closed thei

Indeed, that could also have been the point. Although it of course seemed quite strange at the time that they would publicly announce that they had closed their positions, unless they wanted the price to drop... heh, it was a mess. In a sense it was the perfect combination of "limited knowledge" (because only a select few had access to Short Interest estimates) and "limited understanding" (because people thought an unchanging level of Short Interest would necessarily imply that no shorts had closed their positions -- when in reality it was much more likely that new, quite reasonable shorts had instantly taken their place). Ironically though, I think there could have still been a larger squeeze simply because there still was plenty of shorted stock and people continued to buy, not understanding that their main "opponent" had already tapped out.