The 1% Club: Can You Spot the King Charles Puzzle Piece That Doesn’t Belong?
A deceptively simple puzzle involving King Charles III proved too difficult for 17 contestants on The 1% Club, leaving them out of the running after just 30 seconds.
The tricky question appeared on the ITV game show, hosted by comedian and sitcom actor Lee Mack, where contestants are challenged with puzzles based on logic, reasoning and common sense rather than traditional general knowledge.
The episode was broadcast shortly before the article was published on 2 May 2025.
A royal puzzle catches out 17 contestants
Unlike conventional quiz shows, The 1% Club begins with 100 contestants and gradually eliminates players as the questions become increasingly difficult.
The ultimate aim is to reach the final question, which is designed to be answerable by only one per cent of the country.
Each contestant has £1,000 at stake, and they have only 30 seconds to solve each question. Players can also use a pass when they get stuck.
During the episode, the contestants reached a particularly tricky 50% question featuring the face of King Charles III.
The question was:
Which of these pieces doesn’t belong here?
Five rectangular pieces were shown on screen. Four of them could be combined to create a complete image of King Charles III, while one piece was an unnecessary extra.
The catch was subtle enough to catch out a sizeable number of contestants.
As the players examined the images, Lee Mack joked about the unusual appearance of the puzzle, remarking: “Well, someone’s ruined that stamp!”
The contestants were given the opportunity to use their one pass before the answer was revealed.
In the end, 17 players were eliminated.
Lee Mack appeared surprised by the number, saying: “Wow, we have lost a lot of people there.”
He then confirmed the figure: 17 people.
Which piece was the odd one out?
The correct answer was piece E, the fifth image.
That was the extra piece that did not belong in the completed picture of the King.
The third piece showed the King’s nose and mouth, while piece E was the one that could not be used to complete the image.
For contestants working against the show’s strict 30-second time limit, the difference was evidently easy to miss.
Another 1% Club puzzle had already eliminated 15 players
The royal puzzle was not the only question to cause trouble during the episode.
Earlier, 15 contestants were eliminated by another question involving a familiar phrase hidden inside a sequence of letters.
The question asked:
“What well known phrase do you get from cracking this code?”
Contestants were shown:
BOTMESSAGETLE
They had 30 seconds to work out what the letters represented.
The answer was “message in a bottle”. The word MESSAGE is positioned inside BOTTLE, creating the familiar phrase.
The puzzle was another example of the show’s format, where contestants have to look beyond straightforward knowledge and identify the pattern hidden within seemingly ordinary information.
The 1% Club progressively increases the difficulty of its questions, meaning that even puzzles that appear simple at first can result in large numbers of eliminations.
And for the 17 contestants caught out by the King Charles puzzle, the crucial detail was simply identifying which of the five pieces did not belong.
