France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
goldenowlhunt.com
goldenowlhunt.com
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Trail_of_the_Golden_O...
Sounds like somebody actually had already solved it?
The bronze owl was to be exchanged with the precious metal one. In the french news, they specifically mentioned that the bronze one was found.
If you think about it, it makes more sense. The co-founder was given the rights to the original treasure hunt because he is the owner of the valuable owl. He is the one who financed the whole thing.
What it says it that the statue should have been in bronze, but is instead in "ferrous metal" and must have been replaced around september 2005.
Anyway, the idea was that the golden one was not buried, only a "pass-out" one.
The creator of treasure hunt didn't bury the actual golden owl, to keep the artwork clean and to force the finder to reveal that he/she has indeed solved the puzzle, and not just stumbled upon it.
And even then, there is a caveat, as gold can superficially corrode and change color under some anoxic conditions (as some people who put gold jewellry in safe boxes discovered).
I think the guy who created it died long ago and the legal office which was meant to verify the prize is also maybe defunct (?). I'm also skeptical the "stone" would be wherever it was meant to be at this point anyways (similar to a number of the boxes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(treasure_hunt) are theorized to be now inaccessible or destroyed).
Anyways, people are still trying to solve it. Last I heard someone claimed that they and their friends had paired all the clues in some way and were close to solving it, but they were very cagey about it. That was over a year ago I think.
Michel Becker only helped illustrate the book that is the support for the hunt and has taken over it when he passed.
As far as I know this was quite controversial because he had not knowledge about the riddles or how to solve them, and was only able to take over because there was a notarized enveloped left behind by the original creator which explained everything.
There are more details on the french wikipedia article but basically Michel Becker did everything he could to make money out of the success of the treasure hunt, doing things that were either unethical or deemed contrary to the true creator's original intent. This included taking possession of the solution which wasn't meant for him to get, trying to sell the prize for himself and releasing new clues to renew interest in the hunt which he was still profiting from in different ways.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvglkr4p578o
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Trail_of_the_Golden_O...
Even a fifteen year-old living in Kansas at the time was drawn to it, got caught up in it.
The golden hare was found after a few years — the whole story of the hare and its finding are well documented in the book by Bamber Gascoigne, Quest for the Golden Hare [2].
The account is a fun read: why Kit decided on buried treasure, how he went about creating the artwork/puzzle, the adventure of burying the rabbit.... But far and away the most fascinating bit describes the various treasure-hunters that then came after the hare.
The party that solved the puzzle did not find the hare. The party that dug it up had not solved the puzzle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_(book)
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1176887.Quest_for_the_Go...
Short summary of the whole escapade here: https://youtu.be/3yaHBdhIsCo
We even had geotags that were supposed to travel the world but we somehow lost them. We also had a cache.
We do not do that anymore but when I am somewhere I sometimes check for caches, for the nostalgia.
https://web.archive.org/web/20241003112400/https://goldenowl...
Edit: Unfortunately, only the home page is archived, not the article it links to.
Some people spent decades and counting on this hunt.
To some extent, it will be a relief to them that the hunt is over.
It got stuck when it had to calculate directions though.
On most of them I've tried it doesn't seem to do much, but I do now use them to try and get crossword clues where I know bits that are often too abstract for crossword solvers.
e.g. "a word that is six letters, is related to royalty, and has a state abbreviation in it" (this isn't a real clue, just an example of a clue that an LLM is much better suited than something like Nutrimatic or a crossword solver)
I would be curious to hear if / how others us LLMs for abstract riddles/puzzles like that though.
It is not crazy to imagine that LLMs could have helped explore the solution space.
(not necessarily solving it directly)