The ITV quiz show left viewers scratching their heads after one tricky question sparked a heated debate online.
Fans of The 1% Club were left baffled during the final episode of the latest series after a seemingly simple question had viewers convinced the show had given the wrong answer.
Host Lee Mack was guiding contestants and the studio audience through another round of challenging questions when one particular puzzle brought the game to a standstill.
At the 15% stage of the show, Mack asked: “Which of these groups of six symbols are in the same order whether you read them from left to right or from right to left?”
The five possible answers featured different combinations of symbols, with viewers required to determine which sequence remained unchanged when read in either direction.
As the clock ran down, Mack revealed that eight members of the studio audience had been eliminated before announcing C as the correct answer.
That decision immediately caused confusion among viewers watching at home.
Several fans took to social media insisting that A was the obvious answer and questioned how C could possibly be correct.
One viewer wrote: “I said A and I still think A. I don’t understand how it’s not.”
Another admitted: “Baffled! I didn’t understand this one at all.”
A third asked: “Can someone please explain how it’s C?”
Another viewer agreed, writing: “I thought it was A. C isn’t in the same order. Explain, please, someone?”
But one particularly eagle-eyed viewer eventually offered an explanation for the apparent trick.
He admitted that he had initially chosen A as well, but pointed out that the key was not simply whether the symbols looked mirrored.
He explained that with A, the sequence changes depending on which direction it is read because the brackets alternate between opening and closing forms.
By contrast, C works because the direction of the symbols produces the same sequence when the group is read from either end.
Another viewer broke it down further, explaining that A would read as a left bracket, right bracket, left bracket and so on from left to right, but the order would reverse when read from right to left.
For C, however, the first symbol points left, the four middle symbols point right, and the final symbol points left. Reading the sequence from either end therefore produces the same arrangement.
So while plenty of viewers initially thought the programme had made a mistake, the explanation revealed why the answer was actually C.
The latest series of The 1% Club is available to stream on ITVX.