Solo Contestant Bags Massive £97,000 Jackpot on The 1% Club After Cracking Deceptive Final Puzzle
ITV’s hit primetime game show The 1% Club delivered one of its highest-stakes conclusions to date on Thursday evening, culminating in finalist Anna walking away with an enormous £97,000 jackpot after being the sole player to decipher the notoriously tough 1% question.
Hosted by comedian Lee Mack, the format abandons standard trivia in favor of logic, lateral thinking, and spatial observation. In a high-stakes “Rollover” week where finalists can return on consecutive nights and compound the total prize fund, the tension reached a peak as three players remained standing.
The Final Showdown: A Walkaway and a Heartbreaking Near-Miss
Heading into the final round, the three surviving contenders—Anna, Sam, and Stevie—faced a critical strategic decision:
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The Guaranteed Take: Sam elected to play it safe, taking his guaranteed £10,000 cut rather than gambling his winnings against the 1% question.
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The High Rollers: That left Anna and Stevie to battle for the remaining £97,000 jackpot.
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Back-to-Back Agony for Stevie: Stevie, who had advanced to the final round during Wednesday’s broadcast only to fall at the last hurdle, was unable to assemble a coherent solution before time expired, logging an illegible answer for her second consecutive heartbreak.
The £97,000 Question and How It Was Solved
Lee Mack presented the finalists with a prompt designed to test literal interpretation over complex anagramming:
The Question:“What common two-word phrase do you get if you remove three words from the following sequence?”The Letter Sequence:T W H W E R L E L E D W O O N R E D S
While the string of characters appeared completely random, the solution relied on taking the wording of the prompt literally:
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The Literal Trick: Rather than searching for three arbitrary English words to eliminate, the prompt required removing the literal letters spelling out the phrase “THREE WORDS” (
T-H-R-E-E-W-O-R-D-S). -
The Result: Once those specific ten letters were struck from the sequence, the surviving characters spelled out: W – E – L – L – D – O – N – E.
Anna identified the trick within the allotted time, submitting “WELL DONE” to secure the entire £97,000 prize pot.
Stunned by the life-changing win, Anna exclaimed, “I can’t believe it!” Under the rules of the week’s special Rollover format, Anna, Stevie, and Sam are all slated to return for Friday’s broadcast.
