The possibly never-ending quest for the golden owl

I have a friend who was actually deep into it in the nineties with his parents. They went digging one or two times during the summer.

The creator said at the time that a 15yo high schooler could solve the game.

Around 2008 we tried it again for fun because surely, with the Internet, Wikipedia and Google Map it would be solvable! Well, no, all we got was feeling stupid and some new knowledge about France geography and history ;)

The thing is, while all the basic puzzles have been solved a long time ago, past the first ones you are never sure of anything. My intuition is that there are too many false leads. Moreover the "mega-astuce" (the last puzzle) the article mentioned is supposed to be from the leads you didn't use up until now, so you have to know which one, and this is the one which indicates the precise position.

We still check the forums from time to time and frankly it's going nowhere, the same debates over and over. I also don't care for all the drama the article speaks about.

In the end I don't think "solvable by a 15 yo" was accurate as when we checked the solution to another one of the creator hunts it was incredibly difficult, which was demoralizing.

Fun fact, Max Valentin found a digging hole not far from the actual owl in 1996. Those people were so close but may never know...

Similar to "The Secret", published by Byron Preiss in 1982, where he buried 12 secret treasure boxes across the USA and published a cryptic fantasy book to find them. Only 3 have been found. Several of the suspected hiding sites have been totally rebuilt. It was featured on "Expedition Unknown" a while back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(treasure_hunt)

https://12treasures.com/

There was a similar phenomenon in the UK: Masquerade.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-47671...

What a fascinating article.

I never knew about these treasure hunts - and while I am not at all the type to get into it, the background with all the backstabbing and all the people going wild is fascinating. Both this and the Masquerade case.

Reminds me of the Alternate Reality Game, Perplex City, from around 2006. There was a metal cube buried somewhere on earth with a £100,000 prize and lots of fun puzzle cards for clues. It was eventually found in England, but one of the cards was only solved recently: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/perplex-city-satoshi

I imagine a lot of other HNers played too!

… and not a single photograph of the actual owl.

(it is a fairly hideous looking sculpture IMHO, so I can’t blame the author for leaving it out)

When I was a teenager I gave it a go. Obviously didn't find it.

There was a sequel treasure hunt "Le tresor d'Orval" that I was much more invested in because of the format - a big picture where you had to find clues instead of a series of riddles. This one was found though. Not by me.

The best way to hide it would be to cover the bronze sculpture in gold, diamonds and silver...

Reminds me of the Cadbury gold egg treasure hunt of the 1980s.

Long read, fantastic story.