I think if we just tweaked TAR a little, to add puzzles (and maybe cut one airport is-the-flight-booked-or-not drama), we’d be in Reality Nirvana.
So who was “America’s first spy”, anyway? Was it Lafayette or Franklin? They kinda zipped by that. And did Lafayette have something to do with the French tricolor flag? I swear, if I tried to piece together US history from last night’s episode, I would think that Franklin went to London in 1725, where he met Lafayette and passed secret messages to him.
The first Race featured a few more cryptic clues before they got dumbed down to the “go here get this” variety. The puzzles are a big reason why I like TH, even though they’re pretty easy for the most part and despite the fact that teams can move on without actually solving them. Making teams have to think a little between ziplines would definitely improve TAR. They’ve moved a little bit back to that in the last couple of seasons, with the “Fuck the Weevils Geography Quiz” from the family edition and the flag order thing from the most recent Race.
If you read the Wikipedia recaps (written mostly by a simply terrific writer, he does such a wonderful job!) a decent chunk of the TH History 101 gets pieced together. Franklin was “America’s first spy.” Supposedly from his apprenticeship at the church, he gathered intel on the British and passed it to France and the colonies. Lafayette is credited with designing the tricolor French national flag.
Hmmm. Not quite as impressed. The article says *both * Lafayette and Franklin were spies; however, IIRC, Franklin spent the revolution in France, while Lafayette spent it in the colonies as an aide to Washington (not as a spy).
And Franklin worked in the church as an apprentice printer 50 years before the Revolution.
I really, really don’t understand why none of the teams thought of this right away. As soon as they said something about “secret messages,” I’m like, “the message is probably written in invisible ink on that great big space on the parchment.” Duh.
Plus, they made a big deal about Ben Franklin hiding coded messages and so forth. So why didn’t the teams, oh, I dunno, GO TO ASK.COM OR SOMETHING and type in Benjamin Franklin secret messages.First link, first method mentioned: "Invisible ink: Several kinds of invisible inks were used by both sides during the war. One type was activated with heat and others by various chemicals. " Good God Almighty, how hard is that?
I swear, I like the idea of having these hard puzzles in Treasure Hunters, but I like seeing people work toward solving the puzzles. It seems like too many teams are just wandering around doing random shit for hours until someone accidentally solves the puzzle. It’s like watching a documentary on the creation of Shakespeare’s plays, except it turns out to be the monkeys-on-typewriters version.
I did it as a kid, but my Mom is the one who figured out what to do first. I figured it had to do with the parchment for sure, but forgot about heat activation.
As for the mirrors, I would’ve been in and out of there so fast. My first though on the ‘bears some reflection’ is look in each mirror and then breathe on it before going to the next one to see if anything shows up.
Did no one draw stuff on windows frosted with their breath only to have it fade and breath on it again to make it reappear?
I totally agree with this, but I wonder if the “Ask.com” that the players are using is a closed database of information for the racers to use. Notice how they always have access to the search engine, even when running about a swamp in the deep south? I also think that if you searched for the same things they are, you won’t get the same results that they show on the show.
It was noted in the opening episode that teams have “special access” to ask.com and orbitz.com so yeah, segregated database of some sort on the laptops is my guess.
Anybody have a quick list of the artifacts they’ve found so far, the ones that lead to the actual prize? There’s the key from London, the medallion (with a ship on it?) from the plantation, I forget the others. Do they start to point to anything yet for anyone?
Heh, heh. Well said and I’ll second that. Like other posters, I find myself yelling at the screen to try what seems to me to be obvious. I’m referring specifically to the mirrors and the invisible “ink” (count me in as another one of the geeky kids who used lemon juice to write secret messages).
I’ll fourth this opinion. One thing I find irritating is that there seems to be a lot more re-use of footage than on TAR. Sheesh. By the third time I hear the same instructions for what to do next from Motorola Man, I’m ready to switch the channel. To be fair, I’ve been watching these episodes via Tivo, so when I see the same footage of a scene mere seconds apart, I forget that in real time there was actually 5 minutes of commercials.
If reality show history is any indicator, probably not. They’re probably going to either give lengthy interviews to reality TV fansites bitching about how it was all editing (like Colin & Christine did over at TARFlies [Part II here]) or else they’re going to go on any other TV show that will have them and bitch about how it was all editing (like Jerri Manthey has done every. single. day. since she’s been on Survivor).
Either way, we’re going to end up wanting to punch them in the neck. So, you know … not so much with the embarrassment, I don’t think.
S’pose anybody’s tried opening the box with the key yet? And am I right that the medallion showed a sailing ship?
We won’t see the Fogals on Dr. Phil, and maybe not on anything else, unless their episodes have higher ratings than the media-reporting-on-media buzz (nonexistent) would have it.
Let’s have another Boston DopeFest, and I will bitch and whine and scream at you guys throughout it all, OK?*
Actually, with her, it wasn’t just that. It was that, after a situation was resolved, she would just kind of say, “Oh, goody” and move on, without any acknowledgement of her tantruming. Even my 4-year-old can acknowledge when she’s had a tantrum.
