Only Connect’s fiendish alphabet question left contestants facing a wall of letters. Can you solve it?

Only Connect has built its reputation on questions that can leave even experienced quiz fans scratching their heads. But one challenge from the show’s 12th series took the idea of a difficult question to another level, presenting contestants with little more than seemingly random strings of consonants.

Hosted by Victoria Coren Mitchell, the BBC quiz asks teams to spot connections between clues that can initially appear to have almost nothing in common. Success requires a mixture of lateral thinking, linguistic knowledge, numerical ability and, often, some impressively obscure general knowledge.

The programme first aired on BBC Four in September 2008 before moving to BBC Two in July 2014. It has since become well known for its demanding puzzles and devoted following.

The question that seemed almost impossible

Each episode is divided into four rounds, with the format becoming progressively more challenging.

The opening round gives teams 40 seconds to identify the connection between four words or phrases. The second asks them to work out what comes next in a sequence based on the clues they have already been shown.

Then comes the famous Connecting Wall, in which contestants are presented with 16 words or phrases and must divide them into four groups of four.

The final round is a quickfire Missing Vowels round. As the name suggests, the vowels have been removed from words and phrases, leaving teams to work out what they are.

It was during this final round of Series 12, Episode 37, the final between Verbivores and Cosmopolitans, that one particularly brutal puzzle appeared.

The category was simply “five words in alphabetical order.”

The clues looked like this:

BGB GBGB GBG

PTTN GPTT NGPT TNGPT TNGP TTNG

MSS SMS SSM SS SMS SSM SSS

LS TL ST LST LS TL ST

At first glance, there is little to work with. The letters provide no obvious words, and the repeated patterns make the puzzle look more like a code than a quiz question.

But there is a method behind it.

Can you work out the words?

The trick is to restore the missing vowels and recognise the five words in each sequence.

The first set becomes:

BAG, BEG, BIG, BOG, BUG

The second is:

PATTING, PETTING, PITTING, POTTING, PUTTING

The third gives:

MASSES, MESSES, MISSES, MOSSES, MUSSES

And the final set is:

LAST, LEST, LIST, LOST, LUST

The words in each group follow alphabetical order, which is the key to the entire puzzle.

The official programme transcript confirms the answers, including the contestants’ responses during the final.

So, how did you do?

Watch full episode here:

One of the toughest moments in a notoriously difficult quiz

The question came at the end of a particularly competitive series. Series 12 Episode 37, The Final, was broadcast on BBC Two on April 7, 2017, with the Verbivores facing the Cosmopolitans.

The Missing Vowels round was the final test of the series. The “five words in alphabetical order” category went to the Verbivores, who successfully worked through the sequences.

The complete final also included categories such as months and their birthstones, things found on a fish and chip shop menu and random words. The Verbivores ultimately finished on 26 points, ahead of the Cosmopolitans on 18, becoming the Series 12 champions.

The puzzle has since been highlighted among the show’s most difficult questions. A retrospective of Only Connect’s toughest challenges also singled out this exact Series 12 question, noting how deceptively simple the answers look once the solution is revealed.

And this was far from the only question to leave Only Connect viewers baffled.

Coren Mitchell has previously described another puzzle as “the most difficult question we’ve ever had”, while a different question from the 2021 series was singled out as her “least favourite question.”

For a programme built around making connections between apparently unrelated clues, that may be the real challenge of Only Connect: the answer can seem completely impossible until, suddenly, the pattern becomes obvious.