The 1% Club player misses £100,000 jackpot after final question stumps him
Steve came within one question of making The 1% Club — and TV history — but a deceptively simple word puzzle cost him the chance to win the full £100,000.
The dramatic moment came during the Saturday night episode on 5 April 2025, when Steve became the only contestant left after the 5% question. Host Lee Mack told him that a correct answer to the final challenge would make him the first person ever to win the show’s full £100,000 jackpot.
Steve risked £10,000 for a shot at the jackpot
By reaching the final question, Steve had already secured £10,000.
That was a significant amount of money, and Lee Mack made clear that Steve could walk away with it. But Steve decided to take the gamble, putting his winnings at risk for the chance to take home the entire £100,000.
Lee admitted he had expected Steve to take the guaranteed money and appeared surprised by the decision.
Then came the question that would decide whether Steve made television history.
Could you solve the 1% question?
Steve was given 30 seconds to work out two missing letters:
TE times T equals MESSAGE
TO times IN equals POISON
E times ?? equals LEAVE
At first glance, the puzzle appears to have something to do with multiplication. But the word “times” was the crucial clue.
The challenge was to work out what two letters could be inserted into the final line to create a word with the same meaning as the word on the right.
When the 30 seconds were over, Steve had committed to his answer.
His two letters were NE.
There was a tense pause before Lee revealed that the answer was incorrect.
For Steve, the £100,000 opportunity was over.
The correct answer was “IT”
The two missing letters were IT.
The trick was to replace the word “times” with the letter X.
That turns the first line into:
TE X T = TEXT
And TEXT can mean MESSAGE.
The second line works in exactly the same way:
TO X IN = TOXIN
A TOXIN is a POISON.
That leaves the final line:
E X IT = EXIT
And EXIT means LEAVE.
So the missing letters were IT, completing the same wordplay used in the first two examples.
Viewers felt for Steve
The result prompted plenty of sympathy from viewers watching at home.
One viewer wrote on X that they were “gutted for Steve”, adding that the show could have had its first £100,000 winner.
Another said they had been eliminated at the 70% stage but had managed to get the 1% question right, describing Steve’s result as bad luck and praising him for taking the gamble.
A third viewer said Steve had done extremely well to reach the final, while admitting they had only made it as far as the 30% question when playing along at home.
The reaction reflected the difficulty of the final puzzle. The answer depended on spotting that the word “times” was not meant mathematically at all, but represented the letter X.
Another contestant had faced the same dilemma the week before
The decision to gamble was particularly interesting because of what had happened on the previous week’s show.
Two contestants reached the final question with a chance to win a £94,000 jackpot. Rather than risk walking away with nothing, both chose to take their share of the £10,000 already available to them.
For one of the women, taking the money proved to be the right decision because she would have answered the 1% question incorrectly.
The other contestant, however, faced a very different outcome. Had she chosen to gamble, she would have given the correct answer and taken the entire jackpot.
That made Steve’s decision to risk his £10,000 even more dramatic. He had the courage to go for the full prize, but the final word puzzle ultimately stood between him and the £100,000.
So, did you get it?
The final puzzle looks complicated because of the way it is presented, but the pattern becomes clear once “times” is replaced by X:
TE X T → MESSAGE
TO X IN → POISON
E X IT → LEAVE
The answer was therefore IT.
Steve’s NE guess meant he missed out on the £100,000 jackpot, despite being the only contestant to make it through to the final question.
