Leo poses open-ended questions

When reading the task brief, Leo focuses on the winning conditions – fewest ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions – and tells Olli that the first thing he learned while working at NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) was to never ask ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions.

However, Leo immediately hits a roadblock in his strategy of not asking any ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions, by instead asking Santa what gender he is (a question Santa is not equipped with the correct paddles to respond to). Leo looks at Santa’s hands for clues, taking notice of his “okay” manicure, before asks Santa how cute he is, on a scale from 1-10 (again, not a question Santa is able to respond to, with his supplied paddles).

Leo then shifts to making guesses at Santa’s identity, simply by listing names, including Arve Juritzen, before his time runs out.

In the studio, Atle asks how many names Leo would have needed to guess before arriving at Anders Hatlo, and Leo responds that he does not even know who Anders Hatlo is (as the voice of the character Asterix, and many Disney cartoons, Anders Hatlo would likely be well-known to most Norwegians from childhood, but Leo did not emigrate to Norway until he was in his early teens).

Leo ultimately wins the task, however, because he had not asked any ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

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