Emma uses “the original zoom”

Having read the task brief, Emma spots that the second ‘S’ in ‘starts’ has been replaced with a ‘5’.

Presumably thinking that there might be an obvious clue she just cannot see from her seated position, Emma begins her attempt by standing up and backing into the house, to try to get a wider perspective on the set-up of the task without actually looking up.

When Alex enquires as to what she is doing, she likens it to zooming out on the display of an electronic device such as a phone, noting that “in real life, you have to do it with your body”.

Emma backs up into the hallway of the house, and then shuffles from left to right, to try to get a different perspective on the ropes, before emerging from the house and admitting that it had not helped her at all. She then moves the chair to the lawn, and stands on it, to get yet another perspective on the set-up, but again emerges non-the-wiser, muttering “Fuck” to herself.

Returning to the table, Emma confesses to Alex that “it’s not going well at all”, before pulling rope 7 and releasing a pile of socks onto the table. She then runs and fetches the chair from the lawn, informing Alex that “I’m just zooming out again”, and prompting Alex to warn her not to fall off the chair.

Emma positions the chair in the hallway of the house and then turns around and spots a handbell on a piece of furniture in the room, which she quickly grabs and rings (note: according to the Taskmaster companion app, this bell was not one of the bells that the production team had intentionally made available for this task – it just happened to have been used for set-dressing purposes).

In the studio, when Greg pulls Emma up on her “zoom lens system”, she insists that there was something of value in the approach of zooming in and out with your body. When Andy points out that “People did that for thousands and thousands of years”, she dubs it “The original zoom”, and then says to Andy, “And you would know, yeah”. Although Emma was referencing the fact that Andy was wearing a Roman Centurion outfit in the studio, the audience appears to interpret it as a comment on Andy’s age, and Emma has to quickly explain herself.

Emma earns 4 points for having rung a bell after only pulling one rope.

(Written by Karl Craven and proofread by M3 / Andres Sanchez)

(Illustrations collected and adjusted by: David Fuller)