The 1% Club’s £95,000 triangle puzzle left two finalists stumped. Can you solve it in 30 seconds?

Two finalists on The 1% Club came within touching distance of a £95,000 jackpot, only to lose out on the final puzzle after failing to count every triangle in a deceptively simple image.

The challenge appeared in an episode of the ITV quiz show that originally aired in 2024 and has since resurfaced. Contestants Christopher and Scott were shown a large triangle divided into a series of smaller shapes.

Their task sounded straightforward.

How many triangles are there in the picture?

Host Lee Mack, now 57, gave them just 30 seconds to find the answer.

The answer was 18

The diagram was far more difficult than it initially appeared. Alongside the smaller triangles that could be seen immediately, the design contained larger triangles formed by combining several sections.

That made it remarkably easy to lose track while counting.

When the time was up, Christopher submitted an answer of eight triangles.

Scott fared much better, but his answer was still one out. He counted 19.

Neither contestant therefore reached the correct figure.

Lee eventually revealed that the image contained 18 triangles.

Christopher quickly acknowledged that he had missed some of the shapes.

“I clearly didn’t count all the triangles,” he said.

Scott had a different problem. He had managed to find almost the entire set, but repeatedly counted some of the same triangles.

“I started counting, and then I just kept counting the same triangles over and over and over again,” he explained.

A deceptively simple question with a £95,000 price tag

The missed answer meant that both finalists lost the chance to take home the £95,000 prize pot.

It was a classic example of the kind of challenge that makes The 1% Club so difficult. The show is designed to identify the top one per cent of players by putting contestants through questions that become progressively harder.

The final 1% question is often the toughest of the lot, requiring contestants to spot patterns, interpret information carefully or look at a familiar problem from a different angle.

In this case, there was no specialist knowledge to call upon. The contestants simply had to identify every possible triangle in the picture while working against the clock.

For Scott, getting to 19 showed how easily the pressure could lead to a duplicate count. For Christopher, the challenge was missing several of the triangles altogether.

The correct answer remained 18.

Another question recently caught out a third of the players

The triangle puzzle was not the only recent 1% Club question to leave contestants struggling.

An earlier challenge in the programme eliminated one-third of the players in the studio.

The question came at the 50% stage and required contestants to decode a sequence of numbers into the name of a bird.

Lee asked:

“If TRUE is 1234 and LOVE is 7654, what bird is 5371324?”

The contestants again had only 30 seconds to work it out.

When the countdown ended, two players had answered incorrectly and were eliminated, while 20 contestants had used their pass rather than risk getting the answer wrong.

Lee then revealed the solution.

The bird was VULTURE.

The key was to replace each number with the corresponding letter established by the words in the question.

One contestant, Matt, had decided to use his pass because he could not see the answer in time.

After the clock had run out, however, he admitted that the solution suddenly seemed obvious.

“No clue and then soon as the time was up, it became quite obvious what it was,” Matt explained.

The pressure is part of the challenge

Questions such as these illustrate the format that has made The 1% Club distinctive. Contestants are not relying on conventional general knowledge alone. Instead, they must process a puzzle quickly, recognise the intended pattern and avoid being distracted by an obvious but incomplete solution.

The triangle challenge was particularly unforgiving because every possible shape had to be counted exactly once.

Christopher’s eight was well short of the correct total, while Scott’s 19 showed how even getting almost everything right was not enough.

With £95,000 at stake, one misplaced count was all it took for both finalists to miss out.

The 1% Club first hit screens in April 2022. The programme has since aired 62 episodes across five series.

The 1% Club airs Saturdays on ITV1 and is available to stream on ITVX.