Would you have managed to get the answer right?
Twenty-three contestants were eliminated from The 1% Club after being stumped by a question that viewers at home quickly branded “easy.”
Lee Mack returned to ITV on Saturday night to host another edition of the popular quiz show, where contestants are challenged with puzzles based on logic, reasoning and common sense rather than traditional general knowledge.
With 100 players initially taking part, each question comes with a strict 30-second time limit. As the rounds progress, the questions become increasingly difficult, leaving only the strongest players in contention for the ultimate 1% question.
But one question that was supposed to be relatively straightforward caused a surprisingly large number of contestants to fall at the same hurdle.
Could you solve the 70% question?
As the game progressed, the remaining contestants were faced with a question designed to test whether they could avoid overthinking a simple premise.
Lee asked:
“John writes with his right hand and the last word he’d write if he was writing this sentence would be ‘be’. If Keith writes with his left hand, what would be the last word he would write in the sentence above?”
The answer was simply “be.”
The fact that Keith was left-handed made no difference to the order of the words in the sentence. He would still reach the same final word.
While plenty of viewers watching along at home worked it out, 23 contestants in the studio selected the wrong answer and were immediately eliminated.
The unexpectedly high number of wrong answers quickly caught the attention of viewers on social media, with many struggling to understand how so many players had fallen for the trick.
One viewer shared a GIF of Reese Witherspoon’s character Elle Woods from Legally Blonde sarcastically asking, “What, like it’s hard?”
Another wrote: “How did 23 get this wrong?”
A third simply reacted: “TWENTY THREE out on THAT?!?!”
One frustrated fan joked: “How t* have 23 gone out?? Being left handed doesnt mean you write words in the wrong order.”
Another viewer suggested the contestants had simply thought too deeply about the question, writing: “Too many people thinking too hard on that one #The1PercentClub.”
The wrong answers had a big impact on the jackpot
The mass elimination also had a major effect on the prize pot.
The jackpot, which had stood at £5,000, jumped to an impressive £28,000 after almost a quarter of the remaining players were knocked out by the question.
That is one of the defining features of The 1% Club: every incorrect answer can reduce the field while increasing the potential prize available to those who survive.
Some of the toughest questions on The 1% Club
The show has previously challenged contestants with puzzles that require considerably more than straightforward general knowledge.
Among the trickier challenges have been questions involving three butterfly images, where players had to determine which butterflies were exactly the same on both sides.
Other contestants were shown groups of six symbols and asked to identify which appeared in the same order when read from either direction.
Another puzzle asked players to work out how many different combinations could be made by displaying four digits on one hand.
Contestants have also faced a secret-code challenge involving a diary entry, with the task of decoding a hidden word.
In another question, players had to count the number of eyes visible in an image made up of letters, symbols and emojis.
One particularly difficult 1% question involved a grid numbered from 1 to 49. Starting at the middle square, players had to follow a sequence of words through the grid before determining where the word “SEWN” would take them.
And sometimes, the simplest-looking questions can be just as dangerous.
One earlier puzzle asked which common food had its letters rearranged into alphabetical order: ABDER.
The answer was bread.
For the 23 contestants who were eliminated in the latest episode, however, the challenge was even more frustrating because the correct answer was sitting in the wording itself.
The 1% Club continues on ITV1 and is available to watch on ITVX.