Could o1 have helped the hunters finally reach it?
I tried, it solved a few steps and was quite impressive! It's really good at riddles and associating random concepts.
It got stuck when it had to calculate directions though.
France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
21–30 of 41 posts
Re: France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
#22Similar: the Forrest Fenn treasure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure
Re: France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
#23[flagged]
Wow. A user account from 2022 that's only posted twice 20 minutes ago. That's a very patient spammer.
Re: France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The english version is weird. It was planned from the beggining that they would bury a bronze owl. 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 finan…
The French Wikipedia page doesn't talk about it, but the quoted text from the English Wikipedia page involving an iron bird (and not a bronze owl) is accurate. Here's the official report of finding it: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0511/4586/7430/files/pv.co... (liked from https://editions-chouettedor.com/pages/documents-officiels ).
Oh, thanks for the links.
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.
Re: France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
#25The actual post https://goldenowlhunt.com/the-golden-owl-is-won-after-31-yea... https://i.imgur.com/ecJeMB7.png
How charming that this event organized in the early '90s is now on Discord.
Re: France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
#26Reminds me very much of the Masquerade book in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_(book)
That's right. Masquerade by Kit Williams [1] was a phenomena in 1979 - a book of weird illustrations that somehow contained a puzzle as to where a golden hare was buried. 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 G…
And here is a very well written summary: https://www.filfre.net/2016/05/kit-williamss-golden-hare-par...
Re: France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
#27Reminds me very much of the Masquerade book in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_(book)
Re: France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
#28Reminds me a bit of Alkemstone. I went snooping about old games magazines from the early 80s and there was an advert for the prize for that game (it really is just a maze with a series of clues). The ultimate solution was to be a location of the Alkemstone (presumably a fake gem) which one would exchange for the prize.
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.
Re: France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
#29Could o1 have helped the hunters finally reach it?
My experience with using LLMs for things like MIT Mystery Hunt is touch and go.
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.
Re: France's oldest treasure hunt has been solved
#30> In 2021 Michel Becker became the official organiser of the treasure hunt, obtaining the sealed envelope containing the hunt solution from the family of Régis Hauser. Becker journeyed with a legal bailiff to check that the owl prize was still buried at the location revealed in the solution. He reported that when he dug at the spot he found the owl missing and instead found a rusty iron bird. He replaced this rusty b…
No, what is means is that at the location, the stand-in for the golden owl was rusted.
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.