Organizer announces cancellation of the rest of the event and denounces a “deleterious climate.”
Those who were already working on the first riddle will be disappointed: on Monday, May 19, Michel Becker, the organizer of La Chouette d’or (The Golden Owl), announced “the postponement of the game’s continuation.” A decision that, he writes on Discord, comes during “a turbulent period.” The painter, who took over the organization in 2021 of the famous treasure hunt launched in 1993 by Max Valentin, blames some of the “chouetteurs” (owl hunters) for their “denial, criticism, unfounded rumors, harassment, and insults (…) Some even going so far as to fuel the media with corrosive pseudo-information, which thus relays defamatory remarks.”
This exceptionally long treasure hunt ended in October 2024, when Mr. Becker announced that the location of the cache had been found. The chouetteurs were able to discover, in a film released in cinemas at the beginning of May, the solutions to the riddles on which some had been working for three decades. The film ended with a new riddle, opening the quest for a new Golden Owl. It was also to be published in the book of solutions for La Chouette d’or, which was announced for release at the end of June. The entirety of the riddles was to be revealed in a book in the fall.
But “shocked by this deleterious climate,” writes Michel Becker, “co-authors, collaborators, partners, and myself have decided to postpone the continuation of the game.” He nevertheless suggests that “La Chouette d’or will be reborn under other skies, in other hands, offered to more positive passions,” without giving further details. He adds that, consequently, the book of solutions, whose release date “will be specified later,” will no longer contain the first riddle of the new hunt. “Instead, the content of the book of solutions will be supplemented with information to reconstruct the journey of Max Valentin’s floppy disk,” he continues.
A “Denial of Reality Maintained by Disappointed Players”
This subject is the object of numerous speculations in the community of chouetteurs, some of whom doubt the integrity of the solutions presented by Michel Becker. The Association des chercheurs de La Chouette d’or (A2CO) even announced, before the release of the film, its intention to file a complaint against the painter. He regularly suffers attacks from some chouetteurs, online but also in court: in April, one of his detractors was convicted of defamation after calling the game a “scam” in a book.
After the revelation of the solutions and the location of the cache (in Dabo, in Moselle), which disappointed most of the chouetteurs, criticism and suspicion multiplied against Mr. Becker. And, to a lesser extent, against Max Valentin, the designer of the riddles. “With regard to an author who has now passed away, such hateful and outrageous cabal is completely out of place and simply reveals the denial of reality maintained by disappointed players,” writes Michel Becker.
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