History LoopholeAbuse / Taskmaster

** In the follow-up task, Kathering tries to get around the the condition that she's not allowed to walk on the grass while holding drinks by "tippy-toe running" on the grass while holding drinks. [[spoiler:Her argument is all for naught, because she spills her drinks, disqualifying her from the task anyway.]]

A LoopholeAbuse examples list from the British TV Show ''Series/{{Taskmaster}}'', a list so big we had to give it its own page. This is down to the nature of the show and how it involves lateral thinking, which makes its celebrity contestants think of ways to [[ExactWords abuse the wording of a task]], [[CuttingTheKnot bypass a task requirement entirely]], question the AmbiguousSyntax tasks are often given, or, well, they employ LoopholeAbuse. As intended, this happens pretty often, and Greg will allow the behavior if it's sufficiently funny, clever, or entertaining [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs (or all three)]], but he is not afraid to disqualify contestants who obviously break the rules of the Tasks. Reggie from the US version of ''Taskmaster'' also did the same thing.

!Taskmaster US

* The stage task for "Die, Die, Die" had the contestants get as many M&M's from one bowl to another while wearing boxing gloves. However, Dillon had the idea of putting his boxing gloves on his feet instead, and used his hands to move the M&M's to the other bowl [[spoiler: Reggie allows the behavior, and awards him 5 points]].
* In "Magnets and Magic", a task was to get to a microwave in a shed within 5 minutes, while taking as few steps as possible. Both Freddie and Rob used crawling to get to the microwave, something which Reggie agreed after the video that it didn't count as steps. Kate used rolling to get to the microwave, as well as crawling. [[spoiler: Sadly, the time ran out before Kate got to the microwave, and was disqualified]].
* In "101 Ducks", a task required the contestants to knock over 101 ducks perched on two walls, while standing behind a velvet rope. After some time of throwing balls at the ducks, Lisa realised the task never specified that she couldn't just move the rope closer to the ducks. Dillon and Rob also worked this out on their attempts and used a leaf blower and a long cleaning pool brush respectively to complete the task. For Dillon, [[spoiler:It was all for nought, as Dillon got disqualified as there was one duck left on the wall.]] while Lisa [[spoiler:came in third place and won 3 points]].

* In "The F.I.P", A task required two teams to play charades, over a river....while wearing foam hands. One person from each team went on one side, the other one/ two went the other side of the river. They had to guess as many movies, TV Shows and Music singles as possible. Paul and Al tried guessing what Dave was doing, until Dave realised he could get someone else to shout out the titles, as he wasn't allowed to. [[spoiler:They win the task]].

* One task was "make the tallest tower". Rather than building a tower Heino Hansen, drive all the way to repair a crack in Rundetårn with tape. This works because the task might as well be "repair the tallest tower".

* In "The Pie Whisperer", a task required the contestants to work out what was in each of 5 pies, without "breaching" them. Roisin and Tim simply asked Alex to punch, eat or generally open the pies in some fashion (the task specified '''they''' couldn't breach the pies, Alex or anyone else were free to breach them). Roisin amusingly, ''looked away'' at Alex while he was testing the pies, and "created her own hurdles" as Greg put it, and she admitted that after the task, she could've just asked Alex to smash the pies open. [[spoiler:Tim gets first and Roisin gets second place.]]

A LoopholeAbuse examples list from the British TV Show ''Series/{{Taskmaster}}'', a list so big we had to give it its own page. This is down to the nature of the show, which makes its celebrity contestants think of ways to [[ExactWords abuse the wording of a task]], [[CuttingTheKnot bypass a task requirement entirely]], question the AmbiguousSyntax tasks are often given, or, well, they employ LoopholeAbuse. As intended, this happens pretty often, and Greg will allow the behavior if it's sufficiently funny, clever, or entertaining [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs (or all three)]], but he is not afraid to disqualify contestants who obviously break the rules of the Tasks. Reggie from the US version of Taskmaster also did the same thing.

* In "Spatchcock It"

* In "A Novel About Russian Gulags", a task was to run as far as possible while continuously making a noise. Iain interpreted this as him beatboxing while running. [[spoiler: He gets last place, as there were gaps between his beats]].
** In the same episode, there was a task to transport the most rice from the lab to a bottle in the living room which they were not allowed to move said bottle out of the living room. [[spoiler:Paul Sinha]] points out that there was no rule against actually ''moving'' the bottle closer to the lab, and he just takes it from the living room to the lab. [[spoiler:This places Paul last, because, as Greg and Alex point out in the studio, while you can indeed ''move'' the bottle, you can't however, take the bottle ''out of the living room!''. Cue FacePalm by Paul, and a disqualification, but he does end up getting a point for admitting his mistake]].

* In "Another Spoon," the contestants are tasked with lassoing Alex from behind a line right at the doorstep of the Taskmaster house. As most of the contestants find, (there is not much room from where they are standing) to swing the rope around to lasso Alex. However, Ed, Jo and Rose realise that they can move the line all the way to Alex and then lasso him from the shortened distance. [[spoiler:Jo received the 5 points, and Rose got 4 points. Amusingly, Ed took 13 minutes to complete the task because it took him so long to arrive upon that loophole and received 2 points]].

** One task was to make a Swedish person blush as much as possible. Most of the contestants tried to embarrass Frederik the Swede by getting into his personal space, asking intimate questions, and outright flirting. Roisin tries this method first and then she asks him to stand with his head between his legs (but not for dirty reasons) to get his blood flowing to his face. [[spoiler:Roisin won the task]].

!!!Taskmaster UK

* In "Down an Octave" a task was to make a block of ice disappear. Tim thought the best course of action was to dump it into the River Thames so it could melt. It lead to some back and forth between Tim and Alex, with Tim asking Alex to stop the clock repeatedly, and Alex ''refusing to do so'' until he couldn't see it anymore. He does stop the clock eventually. [[spoiler:Tim came last, despite his "creative" solution]].

* In "Little Denim Shorts" Tim tried to get out of a task requiring him to grow out a nail by getting a ''written excuse'' from the director of the play he was appearing in (his character was a compulsive nail biter). It didn't work, as Frank Skinner pointed out that Tim could have grown out a toenail

* In "Spatchcock It", one task is to get a stuffed camel through the smallest gap possible. Most of the contestants try to shove the camel, either whole or cut up, through small spaces. Mel, however, runs off in a taxi, and run around with the camel in a ''"Baby GAP" store'' (the smallest of the GAP clothing brand stores). [[spoiler: Greg awards her first place for her ingenuity]].

* In "Pea in a Haystack", a task required contestants to propel a pea onto a red rug. However, the verb "propel" is quite vague, although most interpreted it as throwing. Rob with a score of 414.53 Meters, by placing a pea in a wheelbarrow, moving it round the garden, then placing it onto the rug. In the video, Rob also had the foresight to provide the definition and explain his rationale in case Greg tried to make a rebuttal. Greg did lampshade this. [[spoiler: Rob came second]]. Amazingly, Al abused ExactWords even more, as he placed the pea onto the rug, rolled up the rug, then carried it in a Taxi for '''18 miles.''' [[spoiler: winning the task comfortably]], while also burning £150 for a taxi ride to Slough for the sakes of the task.
* In "Look at Me", all the contestants had to draw a painting of Greg on an easel several feet away surrounded by a red mat, with only paint or paintbrushes being allowed to touch the canvas or the mat. Hugh put two mats down to reach the canvas, Joe stuck a paintbrush onto a long stick, Lolly did the same thing as Joe, with her canvas falling over near the end and instead just knelt down and continued painting it. However Mel and Noel decided to roll up a portion of the red mat with a paintbrush to stand next to the canvas. [[spoiler:Hugh got disqualified, Lolly came fourth, Mel came third, Joe came second, and Noel came first]].

* In "Phoenix", one of the tasks is to remove a ball from a tube without moving the tube. Aisling Bea takes the tray the tube is attached to and it turns it upside down. [[spoiler: Sadly, she is promptly disqualified, as the tube clearly moves while she is turning it upside down.]]

!!!Taskmaster US

!!!Other Taskmaster-related content

A LoopholeAbuse examples list from the British TV Show ''Series/{{Taskmaster}}'', a list so big we had to give it its own page. This is down to the nature of the show, which makes its celebrity contestants think of ways to [[ExactWords abuse the wording of a task]], [[CuttingTheKnot bypass a task requirement entirely]], question the AmbiguousSyntax tasks are often given, or, well, they employ LoopholeAbuse. As expected, this happens pretty often, and Greg will allow the behavior if it's sufficiently funny, clever, or entertaining [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs (or all three)]], but otherwise, he is not afraid to disqualify contestants for attempting it. Reggie from the US version of Taskmaster also did the same thing.

* In "Their waters so delicious", both Sally and Mark abuse the [[ExactWords wording of a task]] that wouldn't let them touch the floor, or another object that they'd been previously stood on, in order to get a coconut as far away from the Taskmaster house as possible. Mark ''piggybacks'' one of the boom operators (the Task stated '''Mark''' couldn't touch the ground, not anyone else that he happened to be riding on). [[spoiler: Mark gets disqualified for touching the floor after dismounting from the boom operator]]. Sally stays on a table, while Alex posted a coconut to ''the Prime Minister of Fiji''. [[spoiler:Sally came first, though the coconut stayed at the post office due to posting restrictions]].
* In "Pea in a Haystack", a task required contestants to propel a pea onto a red rug. However, the wording of the task didn't outright state that throwing it was required (the pea only had to be propelled onto the rug), which left Rob with a whopping score of 414.53 Meters, all by placing a pea in a wheelbarrow, moving it round the garden, then placing it onto the rug. In the video, Rob also had the foresight to provide the definition and explain his rationale in case Greg tried to make a rebuttal. Greg did lampshade this. [[spoiler: Rob came second]]. Amazingly, Al abused ExactWords even more, as he placed the pea onto the rug, rolled up the rug, then carried it in a Taxi for '''18 miles.''' [[spoiler: winning the task comfortably]], while also burning £150 for a taxi ride to Slough for the sakes of the task.
* In "Look at Me", all the contestants had to draw a painting of Greg from a distance, and a red mat was separating the contestants from the canvas. Hugh put two mats down to reach the canvas, Joe stuck a paintbrush onto a long stick, Lolly did the same thing as Joe, with her canvas falling over near the end and instead just knelt down and continued painting it. However Mel and Noel decided to roll up a portion of the red mat with a paintbrush (they weren't allowed to touch it, but there were not rules saying they couldn't move the mat) closer to the easel, and subsequently painted Greg without the distance issue. [[spoiler:Hugh got disqualified, Lolly came fourth, Mel came third, Joe came second, and Noel came first]].
* In "Twelve Blush Majesty", one of the tasks involves the contestants to get a cricket ball into a golf hole on the other side of the garden. The tactics used ranged from pretty logical, so Phil used brooms and sticks to guide the ball into the hole, Jessica did a similar thing but with pipes, which in her case, ''actively hampered her progress'', James relied on his own actual skill (and misses a Par, much to his anger and frustration), Kerry also relied on her own skill. Rhod however, managed to ''dig up the golf hole'', place it on top of the mat that was above it, drag the mat to the ball, reassemble the hole near the ball, places a pipe leading to the hole, and shoots to get a hole in one. [[spoiler: He wins the full 5 points, simply because of how outside the box his approach was.]]

LoopholeAbuse examples list from the British TV Show ''Series/{{Taskmaster}}'', a list so big we had to give it its own page. This is because the nature of the show makes the celebrity contestants often think of ways to [[ExactWords abuse the wording of a task]], [[CuttingTheKnot bypass a task requirement entirely]], question the AmbiguousSyntax tasks are often given, or, well, they employ LoopholeAbuse. As expected, this happens pretty often, and usually Greg (UK) or Reggie (US) will allow the behavior if it's sufficiently funny, clever, or entertaining [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs (or all three)]], but otherwise they are not afraid to disqualify contestants for attempting it.

** This tradition was started by Richard Osman in "There's Strength in Arches", in which he pumps up a bed before reading the task out loud, as foresight from other tasks had taught him up until that point that most tasks ended with the dreaded sentence. [[spoiler: Ironically, this turned out to be completely unnecessary to complete the task.]]

* In "Fear Of Failure", the contestants have to place three yoga balls on the yoga mat on top of a hill. Most of the contestants carried the balls up the hill, but Richard runs up the hill to carry the mat down, and argues that the [[ExactWords wording of the challenge]] didn't outright state the mat had to stay in place on top of the hill. Alex checked with [[{{Series/Countdown}} Susie Dent]], and she concurs with Richard. [[spoiler: He wins the task.]]
* In "There's Strength in Arches", a task required to get some objects from one side of a water stream to another, into a shopping trolley. While everyone used bridges, waded through the stream, or threw the items into the shopping trolley, only Richard throws the trolley ''to the items'', so transporting would be easier (the task only specified the items had to be ''in the trolley'', there were no rules about not moving the trolley).

* In "Fear of Failure", the contestants are ordered to place three large exercise balls on top of a yoga mat which is in top of a steep hill. While everyone else interprets this as getting the balls up the hill and does so (with varying degrees of competency), Richard instead brings the yoga mat down from the hill and places the balls on it at the bottom, reasoning that the task is worded in such a way that it never actually requires the balls to be taken up the hill. This one ultimately required the producers to get in touch with Susie Dent, the prominent lexicographer who notably appears on ''Series/{{Countdown}}'', to judge whether Richard had interpreted the task reasonably. [[spoiler: Susie concurred with Richard's reading as being valid, enabling Richard to win the task.]]

** Another task from the same episode had the contestants try to transfer as much water as they could between two buckets placed far apart with only laughably ineffective materials to help them. They also could not move either bucket. Al Murray got around this last part by paying Alex to move the bucket for him -- after all, the task's instructions didn't say that ''Alex'' couldn't move the buckets.

* Richard in "There's Strength in Arches" pumps up a bed before reading the task out loud, as foresight from other tasks had taught him up until that point that most tasks ended with the dreaded sentence. [[spoiler: Ironically, this turned out to be completely unnecessary to complete the task.]]

[[caption-width-right:250:How do you get a golfball into a hole without carrying it? Move the whole hole, of course!]]

* In "The F.I.P", A task required two teams to play charades, over a river....while wearing foam hands. One person from each team went on one side, the other one/ two went the other side of the river. They had to guess as many movies, TV Shows and Music singles as possible. Paul and Al tried guessing what Dave was doing, until Dave realised he could get someone else to shout out the titles, as he wasn't allowed to. [[spoiler:they win the task]].