Nick traps himself under the bed

Upon reading the task brief, Nick asks how he’ll know which tie is the ‘terrible tie’, and Alex assures him that he’ll just know.

Nick initially attempts to clarify what ‘horizontal’ means, deciding that it only means that his back must be parallel to the ground, before getting up on his hands and knees and asking whether that is allowed.

At some point, he finds the poles beneath the camping bed and attaches two of them together, end-to-end. He is apparently then able to hook down at least two ties, which he uses to tie himself to the bed, around the waist.

Nick decides to change his strategy after a while, attempting to untie himself from the bed while asking Alex how much time he has left (though he accidentally calls him ‘Greg’, which Alex thanks him for). He eventually realises that he is permitted to leave the lab, but also suspects that he may have left it too late. When Alex tells him he has three and a half minutes remaining, he attempts to shuffle the bed over to the doorway, and then rolls off the edge of it while still tied to it, tipping the whole thing over on its side.

While trying to crawl through the doorway with the bed on his back, he admits “I don’t know what this is gaining me”. He then attempts to stand up, outside the lab, but discovers that he is trapped beneath the bed. As he tries to back into the room again, he admits, in a sad voice, that “I don’t think I’ve done this one right”.

In his final minute, Nick attempts to flip the bed back over again, but the time runs out while he’s still on his side. He then manages to stand back up while still tied to the bed, and attempts to leave the lab like that, but gets stuck in the doorway.

In the studio, Nick admits that he had actually cried during the task. When Greg asks him what was going through his mind, while he was “crawling around on the floor with a camp bed strapped to your back”, Nick shares that he’d felt “like a woodlouse that had inverted itself”, noting that “once I’d flipped… there was nothing I could do”. When Greg pushes Nick on why he’d even flipped in the first place, Nick doesn’t have an answer, simply stating “Yeah, well, it’s a good question”.

Nick ultimately receives 2 points, as the person who was the least tied up.

(Written by Karl Craven)

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