searchers put all their knowledge together, the owl would be found in....two hours". Valentin also included false trails in the riddles, which he admitted was normal in treasure hunt games, but which he later regretted putting too much work into. He estimated that the hunt would last between four months and a year. Valentin later created more than twenty other treasure hunts, all of which have been resolved. Riddles The book consists of eleven double-page spreads, each of which is a discrete riddle composed of a title, text, and a painting. Each pair of pages is numbered with a wavelength associated with its colors, and with an owl face. Notes Original Order, as published: 500, 530, 780, 600, B, 420, 520, 650, 470, 560, and 580. B Order, by solving the B riddle: B, 530, 780, 470, 580, 600, 500, 420, 560, 650, and 520. Additional clues After releasing the book, Max Valentin gave some general clues about the game. These clues were often short riddles, or plays on words. Some of the clues were refutations; readers were looking for the owl in erroneous places such as Mont Saint-Michel and at Notre Dame de Paris, and Valentin felt the need to publicly dismiss these solutions. He also published new clues, in the form of two cards – one global, one precise – that lead to the final zone and the buried owl. He also said that the owl was not on an island, and that it is buried at least 100 kilometers (62 miles) inland. On 3 June 1993, Valentin created a Minitel server, 'MaxVal', in order to answer public questions about the game. During the following eight-year period, he answered nearly 100,000 questions. The subjects were various, and Valentin detailed many parts of the game, including the elements of the final zone, and the techniques needed to interpret the eleven riddles. Valentin closed the server on 13 December 2001, commenting that it had represented the highest level of "intelligence per square centimetre" in France. Three specific techniques were confirmed by Valentin before his death: The use of maps. The reader must do something with a map, to reveal the final zone of the game, then use a precise map of that zone to find the cache that contains the owl. The existence of a "mega trick", which is the key to using the sequence of eleven riddles to identify