Two Final Players Lose Out On £99,000 Jackpot After Tricky The 1% Club Word Puzzle Leaves Them Stumped

A deceptively simple word puzzle on ITV’s The 1% Club proved too difficult for two contestants who made it all the way to the final round, costing them the chance to walk away with a staggering £99,000 jackpot. But while their answers seemed plausible, the correct solution relied on a clever detail that was easy to overlook.

Hosted by Lee Mack, the popular quiz show challenges contestants with brainteasers designed to test their logic, observation skills and ability to think beyond the obvious. Even players who survive the earlier rounds can find themselves struggling when they reach the show’s notoriously difficult 1% question.

In one episode, three contestants, Victoria, Phil and Anne, made it to the final stage. However, they faced a crucial decision before tackling the last puzzle.

Victoria chose to secure her share of £10,000, while Phil and Anne decided to take a bigger risk by competing for the £99,000 jackpot.

Their decision left the pair facing a word question that would ultimately prove to be their downfall.

Could You Solve The Tricky Word Puzzle?

The question displayed four words on the screen:

• Into
• Therefore
• Evaluate
• Benign

Lee Mack asked the contestants: “All the words in this list have something specific in common. What is it?”

At first glance, the challenge appeared straightforward. The four words seemed unrelated in meaning and varied considerably in length, making it difficult to identify an obvious connection.

Anne believed she had spotted the pattern, suggesting that all four words contained names. Phil initially considered a different possibility, reasoning that each word could be divided into two separate words.

However, he reconsidered his answer after noticing that the theory did not appear to work with “Benign”.

Unfortunately for both contestants, neither managed to identify the correct connection before submitting their answers. Their incorrect responses meant they missed out on the £99,000 prize.

Lee Mack Reveals The Unexpected Answer

The solution depended on how the words sounded rather than what they meant.

Lee revealed that all four words ended with the sound of a number: two, four, eight and nine.

The connection is easier to recognise when the endings are spoken aloud. The final sounds of “Into”, “Therefore”, “Evaluate” and “Benign” correspond to the numbers two, four, eight and nine respectively.

@1percentclubitv The final 1% question 🏆 Conment your answer below 👇 #The1PercentClub will be back in 3 days on #ITV 1 and @WeAreSTV. Straight after #BGT or catch up on @ITVX ! #quiz #Saturdaynight #LeeMack #TV #funny #meme #Saturday #quiztok #win #1 ♬ original sound – The 1% Club

It was a subtle linguistic trick that demonstrated why seemingly simple questions on The 1% Club can be so challenging. Contestants must often abandon their first assumptions and look for patterns that are not immediately obvious.

For Phil and Anne, however, the discovery came too late to save their shot at the jackpot.

Another The 1% Club Question Eliminates 25 Contestants

The word puzzle was far from the only challenge to leave contestants struggling on the ITV quiz show.

In another episode, a counting question proved surprisingly difficult, knocking out a remarkable 25 players in a single round.

Contestants were shown an image of a brick wall made up of golden bricks, with several bricks missing from the middle. They were then given 30 seconds to answer a seemingly straightforward question: “How many bricks are missing from this wall?”

As the countdown continued, Lee Mack made a quip about the situation, joking: “Where are Pink Floyd when you need them.”

Despite the apparent simplicity of the task, 25 contestants failed to provide the correct answer. When the time ran out, the solution was revealed to be 12, leaving just 70 competitors in the running.

The result was another reminder that questions requiring little more than careful observation can be just as challenging as those involving complicated logic.

Some Of The Show’s Most Challenging Brain Teasers

Over the course of the series, The 1% Club has presented contestants with a wide variety of puzzles designed to challenge their reasoning, attention to detail and ability to recognise patterns.

Among the show’s most difficult questions have been:

• The butterfly puzzle: Players had to compare three butterfly images and identify which butterflies were exactly the same on both sides.
• The symbol challenge: Contestants were shown groups of six symbols and asked to identify those that appeared in the same order when read from left to right and right to left.
• The four-digit puzzle: Players had to calculate how many different combinations could be displayed using four digits on one hand.
• The secret diary: Contestants were asked to decipher a coded message from Peter’s old diary and identify a bold word. The message read: “WH89 I GR1W UP I WA92 21 B8 A 5L1RI72.”
• The hidden eyes challenge: Players had to count the eyes visible in an image containing a mixture of letters, symbols and emojis.
• The number-grid puzzle: Contestants were presented with a grid containing numbers in ascending order from 1 to 49. Starting at the central square, number 25, the instruction SEEN led to square 27, while NEW led to square 20. They then had to determine which square the instruction SEWN would lead to.
• The alphabetical food question: In a comparatively simple challenge, players had to identify a common food whose letters had been rearranged into alphabetical order. The letters provided were ABDER.

Each puzzle required a different approach, with some relying on visual recognition and others testing mathematical reasoning, language skills or the ability to identify hidden patterns.

Would You Have Made It To The End?

The two episodes highlight the appeal of The 1% Club, where questions that initially appear easy can quickly become frustratingly difficult once contestants begin searching for the wrong answers.

For Phil and Anne, the four-word challenge proved costly, while the missing-bricks question eliminated a substantial number of players who failed to count correctly within the time limit.

The 1% Club continues to put contestants’ problem-solving skills to the test, with players competing for the opportunity to win a share of the show’s jackpot.

The programme airs on ITV1 and is also available to stream on ITVX.