Hannah preserves her academic reputation

After she enters the lab, Alex asks Hannah whether he should address her as ‘Professor’ and she jokingly insists that he does, before telling him not to, since “that sounds weird”.

Having read the initial task brief, Hannah’s attention is drawn to the hand attached to the wall, and she appears to be considering whether she could put all of the gloves on it. However, as she investigates the hand, she realises that the paper behind it is actually covering up a second task brief, which she then reads.

Having not spotted the additional text on the back of the initial task brief, Hannah decides to put some gloves on before completing the second part of the task, presumably assuming that she would be disqualified for not donning any gloves at all. She stuffs surgical gloves into all of the pockets in her denim suit, up her sleeves, and in the gaps between the buttons running up the front of it. She wears just one pair of surgical gloves on her hands.

When Alex notes that she’d found the second part of the task but was still putting gloves on, she admits “Yeah, I did do that, didn’t I?”. After Alex hands her the two cocktail glasses full of sand, she states “Really should’ve read that better, shouldn’t I?”.

Hannah initially holds one glass in each hand and uses her mouth to pull the gloves out of her sleeves and drop them into the briefcase, spilling some sand in the process. She then switches to holding both glasses in one hand while using the other to pull gloves out from her pockets and from between her buttons. Finally, she uses her mouth to pull the gloves off of her hands, ending up having to pull a small piece of the glove material out of her mouth.

In the studio, Greg addresses Hannah’s attempt by first checking that she’s a professor, then asking what she is a professor of (Mathematics), and then checking whether “that’s legit, yeah?”. As he begins to launch into a withering summary of her performance, which is based entirely on his assumption that she’d read the back of the initial task brief, she interjects to correct him on that, explaining that she’d assumed that she had to complete both parts of the task. Alex responds to this by saying “this explains a lot”, before adding “Cos we thought you were really thick.”

Alex reveals that Hannah had spilt 76 grams of sand, and had put all of her gloves back into the briefcase in just 1 minute and 46 seconds, giving her a total time of 3 minutes and 2 seconds, and earning her 5 points.

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

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by Karl Craven)