I clicked eagerly and appreciated the approach but not the analysis of the results. The only judging criteria was "coverage" (enough but not too much) but no thought was given to thickness, and some application patterns lend themselves to thicker results (just compare the five dots pic to the full coverage or three lines pic). You can see from the results that the "winners" have a fairly thick layer of substrate. You want the absolute thinnest layer of thermal paste that will achieve full coverage.

Thanks for posting an actual test rather than perpetuating tradition without verification

Giving a single moment of thought to what happens when the paste is squished to this should lead everyone to the conclusion that a square that is equidistant from the edge to the center is the right pattern with maybe a dot it the middle for piece of mind.

That wasn't tested there.