The 1% Club: 14 contestants eliminated by tricky limerick question. Could you solve it in 30 seconds?

Fourteen contestants were knocked out of The 1% Club by a deceptively complicated limerick question, with players given just 30 seconds to work out which word satisfied a series of unusual conditions.

The puzzle appeared in the 30% round of the ITV quiz show, hosted by Lee Mack, during the episode aired on May 24, 2025. It required contestants to think about syllables, vowels and the position of letters in the alphabet rather than relying on general knowledge.

The question proved difficult enough to eliminate 14 people in a single round.

Could you find the correct word?

By this stage of the game, the contestants had already faced several rounds of increasingly difficult questions.

Lee introduced the challenge by explaining that Jamil was writing a limerick and needed a word to complete the final line.

The word had to meet four conditions:

• It had to contain two syllables
• It could have only two different vowels
• It had to begin with a letter in an even-numbered position in the alphabet
• It needed to contain at least three letters from the second half of the alphabet, meaning letters N through Z

The five choices were:

A) Doggie
B) Blazes
C) Hotel
D) Prizes
E) Rabbit

Contestants had 30 seconds to make their decision.

When the time ran out, Lee revealed that the correct answer was Prizes.

The answer depends on checking every condition rather than simply looking for a word that sounds suitable for a limerick. Doggie has three different vowels, while Blazes, Hotel and Rabbit each contain only two letters from the second half of the alphabet. Prizes satisfies all of the requirements.

Fourteen contestants failed to identify it and were eliminated.

Another seemingly simple question eliminated 23 players

The limerick puzzle was not the only question to cause a major clear-out during the episode.

Earlier in the show, a 70% question resulted in 23 contestants being eliminated, despite many viewers considering the answer straightforward.

Lee presented the following scenario:

John writes with his right hand, and the last word he would write if he were writing the sentence is “be”.

If Keith writes with his left hand, what would be the last word he would write in the sentence above?

The answer was “be.”

The fact that Keith is left-handed does not change the order of the words in the sentence, so the final word remains the same.

Yet 23 contestants selected the wrong answer and left the game.

The question also prompted plenty of disbelief among viewers watching at home. Several took to social media to comment on the number of players who had been caught out, with some suggesting that contestants had overthought what was essentially a common-sense question.

One viewer questioned how 23 people could have got it wrong, while another suggested that the contestants had simply thought too deeply about the puzzle. A third expressed surprise that so many players had been eliminated on that particular question.

How The 1% Club works

Unlike traditional quiz shows, The 1% Club does not focus on general knowledge.

The format begins with 100 contestants, who are challenged with puzzles based on logic, reasoning and common sense. Each question has a 30-second time limit, and the field becomes smaller as contestants fail to find the correct answers.

The questions are linked to percentages representing the proportion of the public expected to answer them correctly, with the challenges becoming progressively harder as the game continues.

There is also a financial incentive for every elimination. £1,000 is added to the prize pot for each contestant who leaves the game. Those who survive the earlier rounds eventually compete for the jackpot and the opportunity to reach the show’s final 1% question.

That format can make even apparently simple questions surprisingly difficult. Contestants have to find the right answer under time pressure, while avoiding the temptation to look for a more complicated solution than the one actually being asked for.

The answer in brief

If you want to test yourself before seeing the solution, the limerick question was:

Two syllables, only two different vowels, starts with an even-numbered letter and contains at least three letters from the second half of the alphabet. Which word works?

Doggie | Blazes | Hotel | Prizes | Rabbit

The answer is Prizes.

It was enough to send 14 contestants out of The 1% Club in one round.

The show airs on ITV1 and is available to stream on ITVX.