Rosie’s really tricky numbers

When Alex asks Rosie whether she can do anything tricky, she says that “I was just going to lie down”.

In preparation for her really tricky thing, Rosie emerges from the house and struts over to the geodesic dome, where she stands in the doorway, sniffs the air, then scratches her crotch and her bum crack, before throwing up on the ground.

Rosie then takes a seat on a chair inside the dome, and Alex holds up the sum ‘9x9’, made from paper symbols stuck to two identical black clipboards. Rosie struggles for some time to come up with the correct answer, holding up and waggling her fingers about for a while, before stepping up to the window in the side of the dome, holding her hands up, and correctly answering “81” [Note: Rosie is using a simple trick to calculate answers from the nine times table (up to 9x10), using just your fingers. However, the numbers indicated by her hands when she holds them up are giving the answer to ‘9x3’ (27), or ‘9x8’ (72), depending on how you look at it, so it turns out that she actually just knew the correct answer, anyway.]

After Alex confirms that Rosie has given the correct answer, Rosie jigs about excitedly in celebration, before again throwing up on the ground outside the dome [Note: In the Taskmaster companion app, it was revealed that Rosie’s vomit was made using a mixture of biscuits and apples.]

In the studio, when Greg asks Rosie what her sport was, she calls it “Tricky numbers”. He describes the highlights of her performance, describing her achievement as “a rudimentary maths sum”.

When Rosie asks Greg if she knows the trick for the nine times table, he states that he thinks everyone in the room can do it. He challenges her to quickly solve the sum ‘9x7’ and she uses her technique to give the correct answer, but he’s just not impressed.

Alex also points out that the system is limited to a certain range of the times table, and when Greg challenges Rosie to solve the sum ‘9x11’, she readily admits that’s beyond the scope of her skills.

When awarding points, Greg states that “we know that the nine times table isn’t tricky”. When Rosie attempts to argue that it is for her, Greg notes that he is not taking the contestants’ abilities into account, and awards her 3 points.

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

(Illustrations collected and adjusted by: David Fuller)