We all like to shout the answers at the telly when watching quiz shows, but this Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? question, worth a cool £500,000, has left the British public completely stumped. The ITV quiz show sees contestants answer multiple-choice general knowledge questions that get progressively harder as they go on.

Contestants win a cash prize for each correct answer, starting at £100, going all the way up to £1 million at question 15. You need to have strong knowledge of topics like history, geography, and sport to make your way up the board – but sometimes, there’s a question that’s so tough it stumps even experts in the field.

One question featured on a recent episode of the show left people on social media feeling “clueless”, including those who should have been in the know about the topic.

David Stewart, a sports betting content producer and journalist, posted a photo of his TV while watching the episode earlier this month, and said the question, which required knowledge about sports, left him completely baffled. The question was: “According to the Guinness World Records, which of these has travelled at over 260 miles per hour during a competitive game or match? A) Tennis ball, B) Ice hockey puck, C) Badminton shuttlecock, D) Table tennis ball.”

Even though David works in sports, he had absolutely no idea what the answer was. He said: “Still staggered at this £500,000 question. I’d have been all in on ice puck and shown to be clueless.”

It wasn’t just David who didn’t know the answer either, as even the show’s host, Jeremy Clarkson, was baffled. He admitted he would have been clueless on the answer too, replying: “Me too.”

But what is the correct answer to the question? You’ve got a one in three chance of getting it right now, as you know the answer can’t be the ice hockey puck. So think carefully and see if you can get it right.

We’re going to reveal the true answer below, so don’t scroll any further if you’re still thinking.

Answer

The correct answer is a badminton shuttlecock. The Guinness World Records website says the fastest badminton hit by a male is currently 351mph, and was achieved by India’s Satwiksairaj Rankireddy at a gym in Soka, Japan, in 2023.

However, badminton shuttlecocks easily exceed 250mph during professional matches, and are officially recognised as the fastest moving objects in any sport. The in-game competition record sits at roughly 265mph, which is what the question was specifically looking for.

Commenters on the post were mixed over the correct answer. Some said they also would have assumed that ice hockey pucks, which do travel very fast, were the correct answer, while others said the hard rubber discs would cause “deaths” if they travelled that fast.

One person wrote: “Wouldn’t have guessed shuttlecock in four tries.”

But someone else said: “I knew the answer and got laughed at by my family, until Jeremy revealed that I was correct.”

And another noted: “If a puck was travelling at that speed and hit someone, it would kill them, that’s how you know it’s not that. Shuttlecock was an easy answer.”