Sam has a strategy of sorts

In the living room, Sam starts placing labels on the switches while wondering out loud what the actual task is, in order to give Alex the impression that he doesn’t yet understand it, and keep the clock from starting.

He places the ‘Leaves’ label on the left-most red switch. He then sits without touching the switches for a while, figuring that it will give him time to “muck around” in the lab while nothing happens.

He then seems to set a pattern for the remainder of his time of flipping every switch on the board, waiting for a while, then flipping every switch again, and waiting some more.

In the lab, Sam starts the task in the UV light. He realises that since he’d flipped all of his switches at the same time, that everything will happen at the same time. Sure enough, within a few seconds of one other, the overhead lights turn on, a pile of leaves fall over the shelves, the platform starts vibrating, the smoke machine turns on, and a recording of his name starts playing.

After a few cycles of this – and noticing that the vibration of the platform is what most endangers his balanced tees – Sam decides to hang the folded task brief over two of the shelves, creating a more secure platform for them, and fills it with as many golf tees as he can. He also manages to balance the bowl of remaining golf tees on one of the bottom shelves.

Greg accepts Sam’s task brief-balancing method, but rejects his bowl-balancing method (after some initial confusion on Alex’s part, who thinks both have been accepted, and states that Sam had therefore balanced 87 tees).

Sam’s final number of balanced tees is not given, but he is ultimately disqualified when it is revealed that he had flipped the ‘Danger’ switch.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

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