Raise the water level to the top of the perspex cube

Task stats

Points

16

Disquals

0

• Eija leaves the lab and heads to the kitchen to search for items. She finds a large pot, and reasons that it might be a good candidate for adding to the large cube. She then heads to the shed and collects a few bowling pins. As Eija sets up her objects in the lab, she muses that life must be difficult for a Taskmaster, constantly having to come up with tasks. Eija’s chosen items are a large pot with lid, a large bowl, and four bowling pins – technically seven items, if the lid is counted separately from the pot. From various shots of the footage of Eija’s attempt, she appears to have also conducted some sort of test with a red plastic helmet in the smaller cube, but that is not shown. Eija’s attempt is mostly disastrous, as the bowling pins float, and they are the majority of her items. She ends up abandoning the kitchen equipment, and instead uses the red plastic helmet and the smaller cube to round out her six chosen items. She presses the small cube down on top of the floating bowling pins to raise the water, causing some to slosh over the sides (despite her insistence to the contrary). Despite breaking the rules, Eija earns third place, presumably because she raised the water level higher than Linda. Jaakko also awards Eija a bonus point for giving consideration for how tough a time he has coming up with new tasks (Eija is also dead last on the season scoreboard, 20 points behind her nearest competitor, and giving her bonus points for no good reason has become a running joke throughout the season).
• Fathi runs down the stairs and outside to search for items. He finds a large rock and picks it up to check its weight, reasoning it might be a good candidate for adding to the large cube. In next footage shown of Fathi’s attempt, he is already placing his chosen items into the large cube, comprising a dinner plate, two pans of different sizes, the smaller cube turned upside-down, and the rock resting on top of it to displace more water. It’s unclear what Fathi’s sixth object is. Fathi uses his hands to further displace the water, arguing that a human being is not an object or item, but a living being, and that there was only a limitation on the number of ‘items’ that could be placed in the cube. Fathi manages to get the water level nearly to the top of the cube. He then re-reads the task, and realises that he has forgotten the rule about not placing any items into the large cube before 10 minutes have passed. As he comes to this realisation, Pilvi helpfully informs him that he still has 50 seconds remaining. As he broke several rules, Fathi earns last place.
• Linda initially panics, before picking up the small cube and heading towards the exit to the lab, re-reading the task as she does so, to make sure she can use the small cube as a tester for her objects. Just before leaving, she realises that she’s not allowed to take either cube with her, and thus narrowly avoids disqualification. She continues to re-read the task, bemoaning the fact that she still has no ideas for how to solve it. She heads to the shed in search of items, but is disheartened by the limited selection, so runs into the nearby woods in search of larger and heavier objects. At one point, Linda even briefly considers using her wedding ring, but quickly dismisses it for its lack of weight, sarcastically thanking her husband, Mikko Nousainen, for not providing her with a heavier ring. As Linda searches the kitchen for items, she adopts a new mantra: “What would Anna-Maija Tuokko do?” (Anna-Maija Tuokko was a fixed contestant in season 3, and she often did not do well!). Most of Linda’s items fit inside the smaller cube (though it’s unclear if she was under the impression that was a requirement of the task) and consist of a heavy chain, a rock, a tennis ball, a can, a pair of maracas, and the small cube itself – seven items in total. Despite breaking the rules, Linda earns fourth place, presumably because she did not raise the water level as high as Eija, but also did not break as many rules as Fathi.
• Kalle searches the kitchen for items, and arrives at the idea of using items full of water. As he fills a few glasses with water, he muses that the small cube in the lab is possibly an “essential key element” to the entire task – that if the small cube is put into the large cube along with five tiny insignificant items, that the water level might be perfectly level with the brim of the large cube. One of Kalle’s chosen items is obscured by the cube, but the ones that can be seen are: a large jar, a large water bottle filled with water, two small drinking glasses filled with water, and a single whisk from an automatic mixer. After placing his six items into the large cube, Kalle supplements them by adding additional water to the large cube from two pitchers of water he’s also brought into the lab with him. He manages to raise the water so that it’s just 4.4 centimetres away from the brim, and earns second place.
• Pirjo sources her items from the shed and the kitchen, though not much footage is shown of this process. Her chosen objects are: some sort of wooden stand, a mallet, an oven mitt, a bowling pin, a large rock, and a bottle of what appears to be some sort of cooking oil. Disheartened by the fact that all of her chosen items – except for the rock – float, Pirjo carefully reaches in to try to rearrange them within the cube, to keep them submerged. Seemingly realising that there is nothing in the task forbidding her from holding the items down herself, Pirjo holds them under the water, and then also sticks some of her face in the water, to raise the level just a little bit higher. This results in the water coming quite close to the brim of the large cube. In the studio, Pirjo argues the same logic as Fathi: that the task only limited the amount of ‘items’ that could be in the large cube, and that a human being is not an object, but a living being. Pirjo manages to raise the water to the brim “with six items and 1/10 of Pirjo”, and wins the task.

Notes on task scores

• Jaakko awards Eija a bonus point for giving consideration for how tough a time he has coming up with new tasks.