TITAA #59.5: The Owl Treasure Hunt
TITAA #59.5: The Owl Treasure Hunt
Chouetteurs - AI Video - Real-time - Time & Space - Uncooperative Poets - Fun & Sad Databases
Because it’s the weird mid-month issue, let’s cover the French treasure hunt news! And then a banger of a creative AI tools update, plus the mid-month weird links—I got my enthusiasm back.
TOC (links on Substack page):
The French Owl Treasure Hunt (article, free)
Running for 31 years without a winner, a treasure hunt for a buried golden owl in France baffled hunters so much that some thought it was a hoax. Started by pseudonymous “Max Valentin” who died before anyone solved it, Sur La Trace de la Chouette d’Or (wikipedia) was an “armchair treasure hunt” book inspired by England’s Masquerade (Kit Williams). To win it, the player was required to solve 12 puzzles correctly. The final 12th puzzle was hidden by the 11th puzzle, pointing to the location of a buried owl statue.
Last week the hunt ended with a verified winner. There is a French video with details verifying the solution’s registration here. Evidently the winner wants to be kept anonymous and the details will be revealed in a documentary in the spring—a bit disappointing! Perhaps surprisingly, the winner also seems not to be French. This page is full of the best info/drama:
In one interesting detail in the video Michel Becker reveals that the bronze owl has left France. This detail suggests the winner was not from France, which is quite remarkable. He also reveals that a private buyer contacted him with an offer of 300,000 euro to buy the gold owl, but the winner declined this offer.
The most entertaining hunt history article I found (in English) appeared in the Guardian two years ago. Evidently the hunt had gone on for so long that original community discourse occurred over Minitel, France’s pioneering early chat system. After the death of Valentin, when illustrator Michel Becker took over the puzzle admin, the hunt was plagued by controversy and legal challenges. Becker also seemed a bit unreliable as a grandmaster:
But the hunt has led some to places of disillusionment, and worse. A few searchers began to doubt that the byzantine riddles had any definitive solution. One believed the prize was booby-trapped, and that Valentin was trying to kill him. Generally, the late gamemaster is revered, but Becker is a more contentious figure for some chouetteurs* – especially after he tried auctioning the original gold sculpture in 2014, saying the game was null and void following Valentin’s death (the sale was eventually cancelled).
(*Chouetteurs is a nickname for the owl hunters.) Becker says “says he put the owl up for sale during a period when he was ‘fed up’ with the game.” Ah, okay.
The 11 known puzzles can be seen on the Golden Owl Hunt site, along with various discussion and speculation about each. “Madits” are clues from Max Valentin via Minitel (short for “Max dits,” “Max says”). For instance, the 530 puzzle puts the start of the game in Bourges, center of France — the art is the original book art, a part of the puzzle:
The “generally accepted” solution explication can be read here, and for the others likewise. A number of other cities are mentioned, and there were alignment theories too:
But spirals enter the picture and make it seem less simple: analysis of puzzle 500 “Gives the town of Carignan, where we must take a right angle to find a four-centred Spiral at 185km.” That actual puzzle page:
All told, I can see why it took 31 years. I can’t wait for the final documentary explanation in the spring. If you want a roundup of French coverage of the end of the puzzle, the wiki has a good set of links.
I mentioned another treasure hunt in my issue 2 weeks ago — the Skydrop treasure was found! It was not as difficult to solve. Onto the new news! And apologies for using some embedded video links instead of just gifs, it was too much weight otherwise.