Mathias loses his mind

Mathias initially asks Mark if he is thinking about a shoe with laces (yes). He starts throwing rejected shoes into a pile, to help himself keep track.

He then asks Mark if the shoe is black (no), before continuing to work his way around the room, pulling down shoes that do not meet the established criteria of being non-black shoes with laces. Unfortunately, as he does so, Mathias mixes up these criteria, and starts eliminating shoes that have laces, including the correct pair.

When he has finally finished dividing the shoes, Mathias looks at the piles and worries about why one of the piles is much larger than the other one. When Mark asks Mathias if he was following a system, Mathias admits that he had forgotten what his system was.

He starts to look through the pile of rejected shoes, but soon gives up, and decides to just start over. He asks Mark if the shoe is “a little feminine” (yes), and then asks about a specific pair.

Mathias makes his way through the reject pile of shoes, asking about individual pairs, and the edit of his attempt is largely dedicated to a montage of his laughing, which would much more accurately be described as ‘manic’, rather than the required ‘enthusiastic’.

Eventually, Mathias is left with three pairs of shoes which, thankfully, includes the correct pair – until Mathias rejects them for not being feminine.

When Mark subsequently rejects the remaining four shoes, Mathias’ laugh turns from manic to desperate, and he takes a moment to compose himself, as he admits to Mark that he feels like he’s going insane.

After working his way through more shoes – presumably from his reject pile – Mathias finally notices the correct pair of shoes, and adds them back to the consideration pile, finally guessing the correct shoe and crying out in victory.

In the studio, Mark reveals that Mathias had actually held the correct shoe five times without guessing (or even asking about) it, and that he had spent 1 hour and 16 minutes completing the task.

Mathias finds the correct shoe after 81 questions, and earns last place.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by David Fuller)