Stian’s indoor firing range

Stian chooses the pellet rifle as his weapon, and the study as his location.

After reading the second task brief, he immediately moans that he has chosen the wrong weapon for the task. However, making the best of his situation, Stian initially fires down on the balloons from the stairs, intending to count the “balloon corpses” later, to keep track of his numbers.

This turns out to be a good method for bursting them, as each shot causes several balloons to burst at once. However, Stian quickly identifies the flaw in his plan: since many of the balloons break into multiple pieces, and all of them are identical, he doesn’t know which parts of the ‘corpses’ belong together, so cannot accurately count how many he has burst.

Stian subsequently realises that he can just count the balloon knots instead, to get a more accurate count. As he gathers up the knots, he comes up with another method to pop the balloons that will make his life much easier: using the end of the pellet rifle to stabs down into individual balloons to pop them, much like a bayonet.

Stian finishes the task in 8 minutes and 9 seconds. However, he actually pops 103 balloons altogether so, after penalties, ends up with a final time of 4 hours, 8 minutes, and 9 seconds, and earns fourth place.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

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