Maria displays feminine cunning

Maria searches the shed, and emerges with a wicker basket, asking David what he would call the item. David acknowledges that Maria has chosen “a basket” (‘en korg’), but points out that the task specifically references “the basket” (‘korgen’). It is only then that Maria looks around and finally spies the basket on the balcony, and immediately declares the shot to be “impossible”.

Maria retreats to the shed, where she pulls out several wooden planks and starts taping them together. David reminds her while she constructs that the ball will also need to be added to the planks. Maria secures the ball to a metal pole at the end of her wooden plank construction, with quite a lot of tape.

While standing on the steps of the house, Maria raises the pole up towards the balcony, and hooks the basketball over the arm holding the hoop. She then slowly slides the basketball up the arm and over the hoop, but is unable to lower the basketball through it. She then loses her grip on her heavy construction, and it sags back to the ground.

In her final two minutes, Maria rallies. This time, she ignores trying to score a “conventional” basket, and instead uses the height of her construction to push the basketball through the bottom of the net and up past the rim.

In the studio, Babben compliments Maria’s “feminine cunning” for not simply throwing the ball until she scored (as Johan and Mauri had done). In response, Maria calls her construction a sort of compensation for “throwing like a girl”, as she knew that she would never be able to just throw the basketball through the hoop.

Maria scores in 13 minutes and 14 seconds, and earns fourth place.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

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