Josh fails to catch any of Tom Cashman’s hints

Josh mistakenly believes that it is a timed task, and that he therefore needs to go fast.

He begins by tapping the socks with the pole to check whether there is anything inside of them. After he taps one and guesses that it con-tains a boat, he pulls it down from the balcony anyway, and then Tom Cashman looks inside and confirms that it does, in fact, contain a boat. Josh is surprised that he was correct, and states “Maybe I’m going to be a genius at this game”.

Josh proceeds to pulls down some more socks and look inside them, stating that they just contain “junk”. When Tom asks him what was in them, Josh says it doesn’t matter, and then adds “There’s two catego-ries isn’t there? Van and failure.”

As he checks the contents of some more socks, Josh decides that he needs to speed up. When Tom asks why that is, Josh asks “Isn't it the fastest time wins?”. After Tom informs him that “All the information is on the task”, Josh re-reads the task brief and realises his mistake. He then states that “there's something about that that’s broken my spirit”, and acknowledges that “We could be here for so long, couldn't we?”.

After more time spent retrieving socks and checking their contents, Josh claims he’s got a bit of headache. Tom is clearly feeling sorry for Josh by this point, and starts dropping him clues, such as asking “How does your sole feel?”, and sharing that his own is a bit sore. Josh doesn’t catch this hint, though, and de-cides to carry on and pull all of the socks down from the balcony.

As Josh continues investigating every sock, he says “If this is one of those tasks where it ends, and you hand me another envelope…”. This prompts Tom to ask Josh if he thinks he’s got something hidden on him, and Josh responds “It’s always hidden.”

As Josh continues to pull down and look inside socks, Tom asks him what socks he is wearing. Once Josh has removed every sock, Tom says “That’s quite a feet”, but Josh points out that it’s actually the complete opposite of the objective of the task.

After Josh throws a pile of sock onto the ground by Tom’s feet, Tom heads into the house to fetch them both some water, and they sit in the shade on the ground together – Tom sat with his knees bent, clearly exposing his one red sock. Since Josh fails to spot the sock, Tom drops another hint about not all things match-ing.

Josh wonders out loud if he should read the task brief again, but notes that he thinks Tom would have dropped a hint if he was doing the task completely wrong. As Josh continues to slowly check through the pile of socks, he finally spots Tom’s red sock. However, he ends the task and leaves the scene without actually looking inside the sock.

In the studio, Josh is almost crying, and admits that he feels silly. Tom Cashman reveals that Josh had spent 1 hour and 43 minutes looking for the minivan.

When Tom Gleeson questions why, after Josh realised the goal was to remove the least socks, he continued to remove all of them, Josh says that he knew he had lost the task, and was just trying to find the minivan so that he would earn 1 point. He then acknowledges that he never actually found the minivan, and seems resigned to the fact that Tom will disqualify him from the task. However, Tom decides to be lenient on this occasion, and awards Josh his hard-earned 1 point.

(Written by JoGo and proofread by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected and adjusted by: David Fuller)