The Golden Treasure of the Entente Cordiale remains to be solved! Two hidden geodes, one in the UK and one in France, are needed to claim the treasure valued at £650,000. Clues to where these two geodes are buried, which are united to create a beautifully crafted Key to open the Golden Casket, are within a set of books, maps, and notebooks. Anyone can join the adventures! No one has yet successfully worked out the puzzles within the hunt materials. Who will solve the clues to discover where the keys are waiting to be found and claim the treasure? Will it be you?
I was thrilled to ask Pauline Deysson a set of Six Questions about the hunt. Pauline is one of the co-creators. She, along with Michel Becker, Vincenzo Bianca, and Stephen Clarke, have provided this challenging puzzle which leads to hidden treasures. Let’s learn more about the wonderful tale written by Pauline involved in the hunt. Might we discover hints to nudge us towards the gold? Enjoy!
Six Questions with Pauline:
- 1Q) The Golden Treasure of the Entente Cordiale treasure hunt is challenging searchers all across the world. Will you share how you got involved with this exciting project? Had you ever worked on any other treasure hunts, either as creator or searcher?
I got involved into the Golden Treasure of the Entente Cordiale project thanks to my father, Michel Becker. I was writing my third novel at the time, and I have been writing fairy tales since childhood, so he knew that I would love to write about the treasure theme. Being my father’s daughter, I have been hearing about treasure hunts since I was born, because of the Golden Owl Treasure Hunt: however, the Golden Owl riddles seemed so hard to me when I first read them as a child that I always thought treasure hunts were not for me. Still, I liked the idea very much, and I do like solving riddles, but I never really worked on a treasure hunt before.
- 2Q) Your story of the Edrei, which initially hides the riddles of the treasure hunt, is beautiful. What was your inspiration for creating the compelling tale? And I also love the footnotes (especially the last). Besides completing the riddles, will the footnotes play a role in solving the puzzle?
The tale of the Edrei was born out of a long discussion. I had to cope with elements that I would not naturally have involved in my story, had I been alone. At first, I was rather asked to create a fairy tale, but the more I thought about it and understood what was demanded for the treasure hunt, the less I felt inspired for a traditional fairy tale, which I feared would look too naïve and childish. Thus, I turned it as a myth, and took inspiration from the Greek and Egyptian mythology. I wanted the story to be as universal as the most famous myths.
The footnotes grew more and more important as we finalised the book; they have multiple roles and wish to be of help to everyone (for, just like any character, they have a will of their own). I can only hope that their wish will come true!
- 3Q) In Author Anecdote #1 and #2 you mention writing your tale with imposed criteria and words used for peculiar significance. Are you able to expand on what you mean by that more? Besides the bold letters in the story, are there other hints and clues hidden within the tale?
What I love about writing is that words can have several meanings. For instance, rather than inventing never-heard-of-fantastic-and-beautiful-looking names for characters in order to make them look more exotic, I prefer to look for foreign words that suit their personality and add depth to the story. Those foreign words often sound much better than invented ones and add reality to the text. Also, I like to think that an adventure may happen to anybody, anywhere, inside reality itself, waiting behind every word… So I tried to make the best of those imposed words and criteria to make them really mean what they say, in every possible way.
This also answers the second part of your question: behind many stories there are several meanings and clues, and I hope it is the case with The Treasure of the Edrei.
- 4Q) You mention Stephen Clarke rectifying sentence structures of your story – caused only by the differences between the French and English language and translations. Do you feel the English puzzle was in any way affected by the translation process? How closely did each of you work together on the entire project?
The French and English puzzles are not the same. I think that the translation affected them even before my text was written, because English and French people don’t think in the same way, and don’t resolve riddles in the same way either. The translation work of my text was in many ways just like the translation work on Stephen’s text: a literary exercise most of all. As an author, I like sentences to be light and efficient, and I worked to make Stephen’s text and mine look that way in both languages. We also worked on Michel’s introduction with this view – one could say that our part in the project was the most literary one!
- 5Q) I’m sure you are aware of The Hunt for the Golden Owl of which Michel Becker is currently managing, and who illustrated the original treasure hunt book. What would you say are some of the similarities between the Golden Owl and the Golden Casket treasure hunts?
I think that the most obvious similarity is that of the game between texts and paintings. Both hunts are illustrated by Michel Becker, and both ask the reader to wander between texts and images in order to solve the various riddles of the hunt.
However, the paintings are more important in the Golden Casket hunt, and the text does have a meaning and independence that the Golden Owl riddles don’t have.
Still, I think the best way to put it is what my father once told me when we began working on the project: “With the Golden Owl, I hoped people would really look at my paintings and not just go by and forget them. With the Golden Casket, I hope it will be the case again, but also that your text will be really read and not just perused.”
- 6Q) What did you enjoy most about writing the story for the Golden Casket treasure hunt? With the hunt launched, what other projects are you working on now?
I think that what I enjoyed most in this project was to translate my text in English. I had never done this exercise before, and I discovered how hard it was and how much I didn’t know about the English language, although I read it regularly. There were words which I thought were formal and sounded nice, and I discovered they were actually familiar, and at times I was merely unable to choose between two similar words because I couldn’t perceive the difference.
I also liked to try and make some of my previous ideas fit into the Edrei story, ideas that I intended to use in some kind of fairy tale one day or another, and which ended up fitting inside this story.
When the hunt was launched, I was working on my third novel, which is now over, and I am currently correcting the fourth. The treasure hunt actually came in the middle of a much bigger project I have been working on since 2007, which is a series of five books named The Library. Many of the ideas I had just used in my third book kept coming back throughout The Treasure of the Edrei: it was funny to see how easy it was to use them again, in a slightly different way. With my books Growing Up¸ Living¸ Loving, and Dying almost over, I still have to write Dreaming, and then The Library will be over, and I have many ideas of fairy tales and novels I wish to work on afterwards. And why not, in the midst of it all, another treasure hunt?
You might also enjoy reading:
Six Questions with Michel Becker: Creator of the Golden Treasure of The Entente Cordiale
Six Questions with Stephen Clarke on The Golden Treasure of The Entente Cordiale
Click to visit the Treasure Hunt‘s website
Go to MW’s Page on The Golden Treasure of The Entente Cordiale
(MW’s pages link all related posts on this site for a particular treasure hunt)
