The 1% Club viewers stumped by fiendish question, but can you get the answer?

A deceptively simple question on The 1% Club left viewers scratching their heads, with only one of five finalists managing to find the correct answer.

The challenge appeared during Saturday night’s episode, hosted by Lee Mack, as 100 contestants battled through the quiz in the hope of reaching the final and claiming a share of the £98,000 jackpot.

Could you solve the 1% question?

By the time the question was asked, just five contestants remained.

Each had chosen to continue playing for the chance to win part of the prize money, but the final challenge proved to be considerably harder than expected.

Lee Mack read the question aloud while it appeared on the screen:

“If you are careful to dot all the small Is and cross all the small Ts, how many crosses on the small Ts and dots on the small Is are there in this particular sentence?”

It was the sort of question that required contestants to slow down and pay close attention rather than rely on general knowledge.

The answers given by the finalists ranged from 9 to 14, showing just how easily the wording could throw them off.

The correct answer, Lee revealed, was 14.

Only one of the five contestants got it right.

The trick behind the answer

The key was to count the small letters in the sentence rather than getting distracted by the wording.

There are 3 small i’s and 11 small t’s, giving a total of 14 dots and crosses.

Player Lewis was the only finalist to correctly work it out and walked away with the full prize.

Another 1% question divided viewers

The tricky challenge came shortly after another episode had prompted a very different reaction from viewers.

Just a week earlier, three contestants had reached the 1% question and were competing for a share of a £93,000 prize pot.

All three decided to take on the final challenge rather than walk away with a smaller amount of money.

The question presented them with a sequence of letters and a simple set of instructions:

“Look at the image below. Beginning at the START each time, LLL=A and RRR = H.
What word is represented by the following LLR, LLL, LRR, RRL, RRL.”

The puzzle sparked plenty of discussion among viewers on X.

One viewer described it as “the easiest 1% question ever”, while another said they thought the 1% question was easier than the 5% question shown earlier in the episode.

Not everyone found it straightforward, though. Another viewer admitted they had not even understood the question, let alone worked out the answer.

The answer was “BADGE.”

All three contestants managed to solve it correctly, securing a share of the £31,000 prize.

Why the questions can be so difficult

The 1% Club is designed around logic and common sense rather than traditional general-knowledge questions. Each episode begins with 100 contestants, who must work through increasingly difficult puzzles as they attempt to reach the final question.

The show, hosted by Lee Mack, gives contestants a chance to win up to £100,000, with the final challenge intended to be one that only 1% of people would answer correctly.

That format can make apparently simple questions particularly dangerous. A puzzle may look obvious at first glance, but a small detail in the wording can completely change the way it needs to be approached.

And that was exactly the problem facing the five finalists in the latest episode.

With answers ranging from 9 to 14, only Player Lewis spotted that the letters themselves held the key.

The final total was 14.