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A win to 'Treasure'
By Sally Boswell
The Paris News
Published August 22, 2006
The suspense was incredible, but Team Geniuses did it!
Charles Taylor of Paris and his teammates Sam Khurana and Francis Goldschmid solved the final puzzle on NBC's “Treasure Hunters” and walked away Monday night with $3 million — $1 million each paid out in 20-year annuities.
“Obviously, we persevered,” Taylor responded to a question from Laird Hamilton, who hosted the live broadcast.
Ten teams, seven artifacts, three different countries on two separate continents, and it all came down to one last puzzle that Taylor and Team Geniuses solved. Taylor, Khurana and Goldschmid claimed a pile of gold coins that they learned Monday night totaled $3 million.
The episode, which included previously filmed events along with the live broadcast from Washington D.C., also revealed the winner of a $100,000 prize from among the weekly online “Treasure Chest” contest winners.
In Paris, approximately 150 people gathered to watch the show on a projection screen set up in Wegar Auditorium on the Paris High School campus. After a chance to eat pizza and ice cream before the show, the crowd of current and former students and their families, teachers, Paris Independent School District administrators, and members of the community clapped and cheered on Taylor and his team as the show aired.
After a repeat of last week's episode, the show began with Team Geniuses stuck in a hidden chamber, desperately trying to decipher the clues and figure out the puzzle that would let them claim the prize that lay just beyond the chamber, behind a stubbornly-closed door.
After two and a half hours alone in the chamber, Team Geniuses still had not solved the riddle, and all too soon they were joined by the other two teams in the final game, Team Air Force and the Southie Boys.
Eight hours passed as members of each team wracked their brains for the answer, poring over the clues, searching the walls of the chamber for any sign that would crack the puzzle.
Finally, as dawn approached outside, it was Goldschmid who came up with an inspiration.
“Charlie, give me that,” he said reaching for the cryptex that Taylor had been working over for hours. Within minutes, Goldschmid had it open, after lining up the letters on the rings to read “F S Key,” a five-letter abbreviation for the name of Frances Scott Key, author of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Inside was a small, metallic, arrow-shaped object, with a hole that matched the spindle in the middle of a stone tablet that stood in the middle of the floor of the chamber. Putting the arrow on the spindle, the teammates spun it, and it came to rest on the symbol of a star. Quickly locating the only star on the wall of the chamber, Goldschmid struck it with his fist and it cracked and fell back into a socket, releasing a stream of light and dust and releasing the lock that held the door to the inner chamber closed.
Inside lay the pile of gold coins. Team Geniuses had won.
“Can we bathe in this stuff, like Uncle Moneybucks?” Khurana asked, as the three young men stood around the pile of coins, laughing deliriously, hugging one another and offering back pats and high fives. Back in the chamber, Team Air Force and the Southie Boys looked on with varying degrees of loss and dejection apparent on their faces.
“We were so close,” said one of the Bostonites.
As the show transformed into the live broadcast, all of the teams were present and were introduced to the audience, which included up to five members of each of the players' families. As the Geniuses were brought on, other players offered hugs and handshakes, until the host had to literally pull Khurana, Goldschmid and Taylor out of the throng.
Hamilton talked with members of the teams and asked questions, some supplied online by the show's viewers.
“There were a lot of moments when we doubted ourselves,” Khurana said “I mean Charles, the Eagle Scout, can't read a map...”
Taylor grinned and ducked his head, raising his arm in good-humored acknowledgement
“... and Frances, who lived in Philadelphia for 18 years of his life doesn't know how to get on one of the major streets in the city,” Khurana continued, as Goldschmid laughed. “But I wouldn't trade these guys for the world.”
Other players were questioned as well.
The Fogels admitted they had played the game “a little too competitively,” and apologized to those they had “fogeled.” The Wild Hanlons admitted that they had not been affected by the other team's plotting because they had been “too busy fogeling ourselves.” Two members of Team Air Force — a husband and wife — revealed that they were expecting a baby, telling the television audience “the robots are recreating.”
As the credits rolled, family members rushed the stage. Grant Taylor, Charles' brother, was the first to reach the Geniuses, and Carrie Taylor, Mike Taylor and other members of Taylor's family followed, joining the group as they offered hugs and happy smiles.
“Rushing through our minds are all these vast possibilities,” Taylor said about winning the grand prize. “Frances is going to be able to take care of his family and get to go to med school and pay for it, and Sam is going to be able to open his clinic and I, for sure, can pay for med school now, which is a huge deal.”
“It's like someone just reached down and said 'Here's a bunch of your dreams,'” Taylor said, in wonder. “'Go live them.'”
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