The 1% Club’s ‘impossible’ final question leaves viewers stumped

The 1% Club has become a TV quiz phenomenon since it hit screens in 2022 — with only the most lateral of thinkers able to crack the tricky teasers the contestants face.

The Lee Mack-fronted show sees 100 players having to answer a string of logic-based puzzles, which become increasingly harder as the game progresses, in a bid to win their share of the prize money.

The only way to go home with the cash is to avoid being eliminated as the rounds progress and correctly answer the final question of the show — the one which only 1% of the public were able to get right.

And while it might seem easy enough while you’re playing along at home, it’s a different story when you’re in the studio and there’s a fat wedge of cash at stake.

Such was the case on a recently re-run episode of the show which originally aired in April 2025 as the remaining contestants faced the 1% question.

With an impressive 12 contestants making it through to the final stage — which Mack said was a new record for the show — there was everything to play for.

The final question was: If you remove all the underlined letters from the sentence below, what word can be spelt if you rearrange all of the remaining letters? ONE SELLING FRESH SALMON.

Could you have got it within the time limit?

It certainly looks like a tricky one at first glance, and as Lee Mack collected answers after the 30 seconds was up, one contestant after another confessed they hadn’t got it.

So, what was the answer? Well, appropriately enough, it was ‘FISHMONGER’.

The remaining letters after removing those underlined are ‘ONESIGFRHM’. Yep, it’s an anagram of sorts, and you simply rearrange it to arrive at the solution.

While there might have been a record number of contestants in the final, ultimately only three of them answered correctly.

Players David Cain, Ellis Knox and Govind Kharbanda all went home with £31,000 each as their share of the prize money.

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♬ original sound – The 1% Club

Along with the unlucky finalists, it also left viewers at home stumped, with one saying: ‘Couldn’t figure it out, went to the comments for the answer. Didn’t even see the four words staring me in the face as a clue.’ Others branded the question ‘impossible’.

More recently, viewers saw a special edition of the show in which children aged between nine and 15 stepped into the studio for the chance to win a trip to Walt Disney World in Florida.

However many of them were left stumped by the 25% question, which was: ‘On Hannah’s 6th birthday, she went to a theme park. She really wanted to ride this rollercoaster but she was only one metre tall. Every year, Hannah gets five centimetres taller. How old will she be when she becomes able to ride the rollercoaster?’

The sign states that you must be 140cm or 12 years old to ride.

We admit, we did a double take when we saw this one, given that the answer, that Hannah would have to be 12 years old (the minimum age allowed to board the ride), appeared to be sitting right in front of us.

But actually this one still involved some maths given that we were told Hannah grew five centimetres every year, meaning contestants had to work out if she would reach the required height before she turned 12.

She would be 14 years old by the time she met the height requirement, but Lee Mack explained: ‘On her 12th birthday she’ll be able to ride the rollercoaster despite only being 130cm tall’.

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