On the Trail of the Golden Owl

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On The Trail Of The Golden Owl (in French, Sur la trace de la chouette d'or) is a French armchair treasure hunt book, created by communications expert Régis Hauser under the pseudonym "Max Valentin", and by artist Michel Becker. The book provides clues to the location of a buried statuette of an owl, created by Becker.

The book was first published in 1993. As of 2016, the "final zone" of the hunt has not been definitely identified, and the location of the buried treasure remains a mystery. It is by far the longest-running contest in the armchair treasure hunt genre.

Video On the Trail of the Golden Owl

Origins

The Golden Owl was Max Valentin's first treasure hunt. He first thought of the puzzle in the late 1970s, and spent 450 hours designing eleven textual riddles, which together hold the clues to a final location and a cache, somewhere in France.

Michel Becker created the eleven paintings for the book, as well as the final prize, the Golden Owl statuette. The statuette is 10 inches (25 cm) high, 20 inches (50 cm) wide, and weighs 33 lbs (15 kg). It is entirely made of gold and silver, with diamonds on the head. In 1993, the owl was estimated at 150,000 euros. A legal protector holds it, in Paris. Becker also created a replica made of bronze, which was buried somewhere in France by Hauser on the night of the 23 April 1993. The treasure hunt was launched on 15 May 1993.

Valentin designed the hunt to last for a few months and to be solvable by experts or amateurs. Valentin also included false trails in the riddles, which he admitted was normal in treasure hunt games, but which he later regretted putting too much work into. He estimated that the hunt would last between four months and a year.

Valentin later created more than twenty other treasure hunts, all of which have been resolved.

Maps On the Trail of the Golden Owl

Riddles

The book consists of eleven double-page spreads, each of which is a discrete riddle composed of a title, text, and a painting. Each pair of pages is numbered with a wavelength associated with its colors, and with an owl face.

Notes

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Additional clues

After releasing the book, Max Valentin gave some general clues about the game. These clues were often short riddles, or plays on words. Some of the clues were refutations; readers were looking for the owl in erroneous places such as Mont Saint-Michel and at Notre Dame de Paris, and Valentin felt the need to publicly dismiss these solutions. He also published new clues, in the form of two cards - one global, one precise - that lead to the final zone and the buried owl. He also said that the owl was not on an island, and that it is buried at least 62 miles inland.

On 3 June 1993, Valentin created a Minitel server, 'MaxVal', in order to answer public questions about the game. During the following eight-year period, he answered nearly 100,000 questions. The subjects were various, and Valentin detailed many parts of the game, including the elements of the final zone, and the techniques needed to interpret the eleven riddles. Valentin closed the server on 13 December 2001, commenting that it had represented the highest level of "intelligence per square centimetre" in France.

Three specific techniques were confirmed by Valentin before his death:

• The use of maps. The reader must do something with a map, to reveal the final zone of the game, then use a precise map of that zone to find the cache that contains the owl.
• The existence of a "mega trick", which is the key to using the sequence of eleven riddles to identify the final zone. Many readers had already reached the conclusion that such a technique must exist.
• The existence of a final, hidden riddle that completes the game. When a reader finds this riddle in the final zone, he or she will be able to utilise elements of the previous riddles to form and solve the last riddle. The decryption of the last riddle will lead to the cache that contains the owl.

In 1995, Valentin said that the book's readers have collectively got 95% of the solution, but as they are not sharing and communicating their solutions, they can't get the last 5%. He also said that when he was checking on the cache of the owl in August 1995, he found some earth overturned about 400 feet (120 m) from it, but that he was unable to tell if it was done by an animal, or by a treasure-seeker.

In 1996, Valentin said that the "remainders" are the key to the owl, and that they can be found in the decryption of some of the ten riddles that have wavelengths.

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Theories

Many treasure-hunters believe that the final zone is the township of Dabo, Moselle. They have identified it based on links between the riddles (the 500 spiral found on the precise map, the height of the Apollo arrow), and some clever interpretations of the riddles (alternate targets for the 560). The area itself has been explored, but nothing significant has been discovered. The identification of Dabo occurred at the same time as explorations of Mont Saint-Michel and Notre Dame de Paris, and though Max Valentin dismissed the latter two places he did not unambiguously dismiss Dabo.

Other treasure-hunters think that the Aude department plays an important role. They focus on the 470 illustration and try to find the good light from Roncevaux. Phonetic-similarity links the Aude department with the Aube river, and (because 'Aube' is the French word for 'dawn') with the sunrise, and so the treasure-hunters use the Aude department (which is also the 11th French department) as the targeted light in 470. They use historical information about Roncevaux (which is close to the Aude department) to complete it and find the zone.

Some others try to extract letters from the riddles to form a "super riddle". Their reasoning is based on Valentin's public answers about "remainders", and the solution of the 600 page. Since the atomic masses left some letters behind (the "s" inside "Cl.Es.F"), it is theorized that other unique letters must exist. But the book does not provide any clear system with which to extract letters from the riddles, and devising a rule that works for all the riddles is complicated, as the riddles consist of varying amounts of text and numbers.

Some others try to find details in the paintings. They look for objects and hidden shapes, with which to identify the remainders in the riddles. Over the years, treasure-hunters have found many elements in the paintings, including hands, eyes, people, gods, tools, and even submarines. They have inferred various "12th riddles", involving (among other things) Napoleon and obelisks such as the one in Place de la Concorde.

In 2015, one treasure-hunter stated that all the others have only solved 40% of the puzzle. He says that he has the correct zone, but that as he is a newcomer to treasure-hunting, he needs time to explore it. His solution is to organize the eleven riddles by the order of the wavelengths of light: B, 420, 470, 500, 520, 530, 560, 580, 600, 650, 780. He then "reads" them and discovers the zone. He claims that the puzzle uses the concepts of darkness and light, and that it has five parts : "Original Order", "B Order", "Light Order", "Super Solution Part I (zone)", and "Super Solution Part II (owl cache)".

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Lawsuits

Hauser ("Max Valentin") died in 2009. The solutions are held by his lawyer.

By 2004, the debts generated by the treasure hunt had started to get huge, and the surviving creators of the hunt were unable to maintain the security of the prize. The Golden Owl statuette was seized by the courts. The creators recovered it in 2008.

In 2011, Michel Becker, the co-creator of the hunt, claimed sole ownership of the Golden Owl statuette, and intended to sell it. Two judicial decisions stopped this from taking place. The treasure-hunter association A2CO played an important role into the preservation of the prize, and the whole community raised petitions to support A2CO's lawyers.

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See also

• Masquerade, a 1979 book which began the armchair treasure hunt genre
• Treasure: In Search of the Golden Horse, a 1984 treasure-hunting puzzle

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References

• Additional information
• Public Answers Database (requires login)
• Riddles Synthesis

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Notes

Source of the article : Wikipedia