Linda and Thomas work on the riddle, while Jacob communicates with “Russian spies”

While the team of three’s attempt is being introduced, Jacob is visibly annoyed, while Linda looks particularly delighted, as they recall what Jacob had done during the task. Jacob explains that he was not actually present within the main house, but was in an annex building in the middle of some woods. Mark confirms that this was the situation, and also admits that none of the additional items in Jacob’s room had anything to do with the riddle his team-mates were trying to solve.

In the house, Linda speaks to her team-mates through the walkie-talkie, and Thomas quickly finds his own handset hidden in the fireplace. Linda tells Thomas that she has an envelope which cannot be opened until someone looks like Charlie Chaplin. Thomas looks around his room and quickly finds the hat and moustache, but then only puts on the hat (presumably he could not make the fake moustache stick to his actual moustache). As he does so, Linda reads out the entire encoded riddle to him.

Jacob, meanwhile, has found his own walkie-talkie and has begun to piece his jigsaw puzzle together. He shares that he has a “nice appetiser” of tasks in front of him, but that something is missing. He says his “main course” has fish, and “long rods” laying across a plate. Linda says the word ‘asparagus’ twice while answering him, but Thomas just says that he doesn’t understand what he can do with Jacob’s clues.

Thomas instead continues working on what he can do for Linda, soon finding the code key behind the portrait of Lasse, and reading it out to her. Linda correctly substitutes the vowels, and then reads the decoded riddle out to her team-mates via the walkie-talkie. Thomas initially guesses that the answer is ‘air’, but Linda correctly points out that consuming air doesn’t kill you.

Thomas then decides to check in on Jacob, who has spent his down-time trying to take a nap (presumably having realised that he cannot actually do anything to help in the task), and has just figured out that if he holds down the ‘talk’ button on his handset, he will no longer hear his teammates’ voices.

Thomas asks Jacob if he has any ideas about the answer to the riddle, and Jacob answers with “gasparkos” (which isn’t a word, but sounds more or less like the Danish word for ‘asparagus’). Linda wonders if Jacob is suggesting that the answer is ‘asparagus’, but Thomas quickly points out that not only do people not die from eating asparagus, but that Mark is also not a piece of asparagus (thus adding three more mentions to Jacob’s total).

Linda rallies her team, telling them that they need to brainstorm. She focuses on just the first part of the riddle, wondering what could be greater than the Stormester, and then suggests “the universe” [note: amusingly, the Croatian version of Taskmaster is called ‘Direktor Svemira’, which translates directly as ‘Director of the Universe’]. However, she then immediately recognises that Mark is not the universe.

Jacob then ventures an actual guess of his own: he believes that the answer is ‘nothing’. Thomas and Linda readily agree to this, and Jacob celebrates by playing ‘Shave and a Haircut’ on his stylophone.

In the studio, Linda admits that it was not until the footage of their attempt was shown in the studio that she and Thomas learned of Jacob’s secret task, and that they had been running under the assumption that Jacob was just an idiot.

Jacob then shares some additional details about their attempt which had not made the final edit: during his time in the annex, Jacob’s walkie-talkie had unintentionally picked up the frequencies of some other nearby handsets being used by local children (Linda jokingly refers to this as “Russian spy interference”), and that some of the children had actually offered their own guesses to the riddle’s answer.

Linda reveals that the group had needed to change channels on their handsets a few times during the task, but that they still kept finding themselves speaking to the “Russian spies”. Mark points out that the team announcing what channel they were going to switch to each time was probably not the brightest idea, but Thomas counters that doing so had actually been Mark’s idea in the first place.

Lasse is shocked that Mark would mock the group for using his own stupid idea, and suggests that Mark belongs in one of the loser’s chairs. Jacob promptly stands up and switches places with Mark, and the other contestants scoot their own chairs as far away from Mark as they can.

Lasse congratulates Jacob on getting his teammates to say ‘asparagus’ five times in total, but sticks to his rule about not awarding points to anyone who is assigned a special task, claiming that Jacob’s reward was the chance to exchange places with Mark. Mark and Jacob then make up on stage with a hug, apologising only by saying “asparagus” to one other.

Jacob, Linda, and Thomas solve the riddle in 33 minutes, winning the task, and earning 4 points each.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

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