It might have become one of the biggest game shows on TV since it first aired in 2022 but The 1% Club is showing no sign of slowing down in its quest to catch out as many of its contestants as possible. Lee Mack presides over the ITV quiz show in which 100 contestants are set a series of twisty logic questions which get harder as the show goes on – meaning many of the hopefuls are eliminated. Anyone left at the end has the chance to play for as much as

£100,000 with a final question only 1% of the public are able to answer. (Picture: ITV)

For those playing along at home shouting the answers at the screen this may seem simple enough – but if you keep in mind that the contestants in the studio only have 30 seconds to get their answers in, it’s easy to see how sometimes they can get seemingly easy questions wrong. However, one puzzler on the most recent episode of the show saw a third of the contestants baffled.

The question, which aired in the most recent instalment of the show on Saturday night, was at the 50% level and was as follows: If TRUE is 1234 and LOVE is 7654, what bird is 5371324? Any ideas what the answer might be? If you’re feeling a bit lost and puzzled by this one – or you think you know what it is – read on to find out…

The answer is VULTURE. Given each of the numbers in the puzzle represented the letters in the words ‘true’ and ‘love’, all players had to do was work out which letter was represented by which number in the longer word to reveal the bird. Or, as Lee Mack explained: ‘If you replace the numbers with the appropriate letters in the question, you get ‘VULTURE’

While the question only knocked out two contestants, it left 20 others scrambling to use the free pass that all players are given at a certain point in the game, which allows them to skip the answer to one question. One of them, Matt Strickland, explained why he had taken that option.

He told Lee Mack: ‘No clue and then soon as the time was up, it became quite obvious what it was.’ And it’s not the first seemingly easy question to confuse the contestants, with another seeing 13 of them using their pass and four being knocked out of the quiz.

That question featured a graphic of six people sitting at a table and read: Three couples are out on a date. No one is sitting next to or directly opposite their date. Arran tells Nick’s date that he likes her shoes. Who is David’s date? The answer is coming right up…

As Lee explained: ‘Given that no one can sit next to or opposite their date and we know from the question that Arran can’t be Nick’s date. Nick and Charlotte must be a couple. Therefore, Hayley must be Arran’s date and Janice must be David’s date. Therefore the answer is Janice.’ Although this one confounded even the host, as he quipped: ‘It’s great when you read them out and you still don’t understand the answer.’