So that a documentary is released in the cinema this weekend revealing the solutions of one of the oldest treasure hunts in the world, certain gray areas overlooked in the film, in particular the solution invalidated by the author of the game itself and the strange profile of the winner can only question …
A mythical treasure hunt
In May 1993, a duo then unknown to the public published a book that will become famous worldwide: On the trace of the golden owlby Michel Becker and Max Valentin. The cover is carrying a great promise: ” Find a real treasure estimated at more than 1,000,000 francs, thanks to the clues contained in this book! ».
This treasure hunt, in which anyone can participate against around twenty euros, is in the form of 11 puzzles written by Max Valentin and illustrated by paintings by Michel Becker, who also designs the design of the said owl of gold. The idea is simple: buy the work for the price of a classic book, solve the puzzles and go dig at the location found, dig up the countermark you will find if you have resolved hunting, and call the organizers that will give you the real owl.
Only here: while the organizers thought that it would last only a few years, it took more than 30 years for one of the 200,000 “owners” to locate the exact location of the treasure, on October 2, 2024. The paintings of Michel Becker are undoubtedly at the origin of the difficulties of resolution, their figurative side opening all possible tracks.
A documentary owl
Despite the alleged discovery of the golden owl last fall, it was not until the film’s release on May 3 to know the solutions and the winner in the cinemas. The documentary, very pleasant to watch and very well written, returns to more than 30 years of treasure hunting carried by a very large community and more than investing in an attempt to find the solution.
Between the return of experience of several candidates and the history of the game, the voiceover of Michel Becker – the only organizer of the game still alive – presents us the “official” solutions of the author of the puzzles deceased since, who would have been put back by his heirs on a disk a few years ago after a first refusal.
If the film devotes a large part of its time to a return to the history of the game between the revelation of “official” solutions to the 11 puzzles, it is that very quickly, things will slip on the side of the organization and get out of the frame of a simple book. Published in bookstores on May 15, 1993, On the trace of the golden owl is, from June 3, 1993, supplemented by a Minitel server on which Max Valentin – author of the puzzles presented by the duo as the only one to hold the solutions – will answer the questions of the owners until December 2001. The ordering of his answers produced a document long of more than 6000 pages…
Despite all these details, which the owners will call “the Maditters” (for “max to say”), given by the author of the hunt, still no winner on the horizon … His death, in 2009, will derive even more the participants, who during this period, do not know if the game continues or not, or if someone is still able to confirm a possible victory.
In 2021, the painter of the enigmas of the book decided to create a new legal structure to relaunch hunting in a framed manner estimating, he explains in the documentary, that he has the moral responsibility for not dropping the incredible community of owners. He then sets up a server Discord To answer players’ questions (around 10,000 very active people), as his partner had done in his time with the Minitel.
After the organization of an agreement for the 30th anniversary of the owl in 2023, Michel Becker announced, on October 3, 2024, that the famous owl has just been discovered, and that the game is therefore finished … Go to the spring for a revelation of the solutions and their resolution by the one who prefers, during the discovery, to keep anonymity.
A incredible legal history
If we leave the room saying that we had it for our money thanks to this very pleasant viewing (somewhere between Treasure Island et Da vinci code), a spectator who knows the history of hunting well can only remain circumspect as to the bottom of what he has just looked at.
First, Michel Becker, who presents himself on the screen as the moral protector of the owl and the legal integrity of hunting, undoubtedly forgets by throve to specify to the spectator the legal and judicial history of his work … To hear it on the screen, it is difficult to believe that he is indeed the one who tried to sell the chouette of gold at Drouot auction in 2014, considering that the game was “finished” Max Valentin and that there was “no evidence that the countermark was still buried” …
The gold and diamond statuette will be withdrawn from the sale, Drouot and the Paris and Versailles call courses believing that the owner of the owl is indeed Michel Becker but that he is obliged to put it back to possible future winning … and if it can be sold, the new buyer will be subject to the same obligation.
Without returning to the complete judicial history of the owl (whose press doubts sincerity in the first years, for example, Liberation), let us remember that long before the death of Max Valentin, the bankruptcy of the initial publishing house had led to the legal seizure of the Lot in 2004. However, in 2009, the Versailles Court of Appeal gave reason to Michel Becker, the owl must come back to him. In charge of guaranteeing the regularity of the game … Nice that he will try to sell by putting it at auction … The complaints of associations and players will allow to discover that in 2004, the organizers of the game were no longer in his possession since she had been seized following the bankruptcy of the publisher of one of the multiple editions of the book … Element not communicated to the “incredible community” to which the organization is due and which is not other than to win …
Let us rather retard on the documentary and the revelation of the solutions, which undoubtedly, will settle all these questions and questions about the organization of the game …
“Ecalminated nave walking on the water”
In addition to the problems previously mentioned, the documentary itself raises many questions as to the solution: the principal being that it had been found in a few months and nevertheless invalidated by the author himself of the game, who probably believed that it was too rapid and would therefore voluntarily be lost the players.
To put it simply, the hunters of the owl have, over the decades, divided into two camps: the “daboists” and the “anti-daboists”. The two schools take their names from the commune of Dabo, in Moselle, where all the puzzles seem to lead the supporters of this place, who think that the solution is buried there. And their theory seems, a priori, Very convincing: the church of Dabo, as posed on the rock overlooking the undulating hills, resembling a boat at sea, is it not the famous “Ecalminate nave walking on the water” described in the book? And the “spiral with four centers” leading, does it not designate the road in the shape of a spiral which leads to the said church?
Only here, when this track was quickly mentioned by the players on the Minitel canal, Max Valentin produced a Madit explaining that any player thinking that the famous spiral was a road should “review his copy”. The documentary itself presents this clarification.
What does the film learn a few minutes later? The disk of solutions bequeathed by the initiator of the game to his daughters and containing all the solutions indicates that the treasure is… in Dabo! The “Ecalminate nave” is indeed the village church located at the top of the rock, and therefore, the center of the spiral from which the exact location is necessary to dig is the end of the road in question.
Luckily, the hunting winner, disguised as an owl to keep anonymity, explained that he was based “only on the initial book” and not on the answers given on minitel …
It is undoubtedly because the final solutions were in the book alone that the co-creator will launch in the 2020s a channel Discord additional where to subject a solution is paying …
The strange profile of the “winner”
And what questions the most is the profile of the winner. He explains, with the masked face and the modified voice, that he is a neo-lukewood who has decided to invest in it during confinement to pass the time. He would have quickly had the intuition that the initial book was enough to win and preferred to resolve one by one the puzzles himself rather than drawing online the solutions already found by the players who have been looking for for 30 years. However, he then explains that he had watched the videos of recent clues by Michel Becker more than 200 times for one of them …
Furthermore, the winner explains to us wanting to maintain the most complete anonymity in order to preserve his family life, therefore, he assures, that his wife and children are not aware that he found the treasure of this hunt which nevertheless occupied him for several years.
A winner who seems to properly arrange the organization of the game, long criticized by many players because of his contradictions and also of the multiple commercial operations to which hunting served as a foundation.
What about the 1000 bottles of wine?
However, the masked winner would do better to start thinking about the explanation he will provide by those around him soon, when he receives the ” 1000 bottles of great vintages from different regions of France “Promised by the” National Confederation of Special Caves to the one who will find the golden owl »In the 2e et 3e Editions of the 1994 and 1997 book. Today renamed “independent winegrowers”, the Confederation did not respond to our requests for details as to its participation in the game.
It left for a tour …
This documentary supposed to mark the end of the mythical hunting ends with … The beginning of a new hunting with an even more beautiful and precious owl to win, signed Christofle. The book, to be published next June, contains all the solutions of the first hunting and only the first enigma of the new hunting, all by the sum of € 49.59… Michel Becker announces a resolution by 3 to 5 years.
Several civil and criminal procedures have enamelled the course of the game and some remain in progress.
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