The final question on The 1% Club left two contestants with a choice: risk their winnings on a deceptively simple maths problem or walk away with £5,000 each. They chose the safer option, and after hearing the answer, plenty of viewers admitted they would have struggled too.

The ITV game show, hosted by comedian Lee Mack, challenges 100 contestants with questions based on logic and common sense rather than general knowledge. As the rounds progress, those who survive can compete for a share of up to £100,000 by correctly answering a question that only one percent of the general public managed to solve.

Saturday night’s episode on 30 March came down to Maisie and Alex, who had successfully made it through the earlier rounds.

But the final challenge proved to be a different story.

The question that caused all the confusion

With just 30 seconds to work it out, the pair were given the following problem:

“Given that: 0+100 =100, 1+99 = 100, 2+98 =100, what is the sum of all the whole numbers between zero and 100?”

With part of the £100,000 prize still potentially within reach, neither contestant was willing to gamble their winnings. Instead, Maisie and Alex opted to take home £5,000 each.

They still offered an answer, suggesting to Mack that the total might be 5,000. Unfortunately, they had missed one crucial number.

Viewers were just as confused

Maisie and Alex were hardly alone in struggling with the problem. Viewers watching at home quickly took to social media to admit they had been stumped by the question too.

One person wrote: “Help me understand???”

Another described it as “possibly the hardest 1% question I’ve come across,” adding that they would even consider it a “0.1% question.”

Others admitted defeat, with one viewer saying: “The number ones always get me!”

Another simply wrote: “I didn’t get it. Gutted.”

A fourth viewer explained: “I didn’t even try with that one. Maths is hard enough on a calculator for me, never mind doing it in my head in 30 seconds.”

So what was the answer?

Mack explained that Maisie and Alex had actually been close.

The trick was to spot the pairs of numbers that add up to 100. There are 50 such pairs: 0 and 100, 1 and 99, 2 and 98, and so on.

Multiplying 50 pairs by 100 gives 5,000.

However, that doesn’t include the number 50, which sits alone in the middle and has to be added separately.

As Mack explained: “There are 50 pairs that total 100 (0 and 100, 1 and 99, 2 and 98, etc). That makes 5000, but there is also the number 50 in the middle.

“That is not in a pair but also needs to be counted, giving a total of 5050.”

So the correct answer was 5,050.

And judging by the reaction from viewers, Maisie and Alex were far from the only people who would have struggled to find it in 30 seconds.