The 1% Club leaves 11 players stumped by tricky letters question. Could you get it right?
A seemingly simple word puzzle proved surprisingly difficult on The 1% Club, with 11 contestants eliminated after failing to work out the answer within 30 seconds.
The challenge appeared during the 70% question on the ITV quiz show, where a large group of contestants had survived the earlier rounds only to be faced with a deceptively tricky arrangement of letters.
Hosted by Lee Mack, The 1% Club puts 100 contestants through increasingly difficult questions based on logic, observation and common sense rather than traditional general knowledge.
The question that caught 11 contestants out
For this particular round, Lee asked the players:
“If you write the words HIGHER and LOWER with alternating letters, what do you get?”
Three possible answers appeared on screen:
- A) HLOIWGEHERR
- B) HLIOGWEERR
- C) HLIOWGEHERR
The contestants had just 30 seconds to decide which sequence was correct.
With the pressure mounting and the clock ticking, the question proved too much for 11 players, who failed to select the correct combination.
Lee, as usual, found time to add some humour to the tense moment.
Looking at one of the jumbled sequences, he joked: “I think that first one is the name of Hagrid’s German cousin.”
So, what was the answer?
Lee eventually revealed that the answer was B – HLIOGWEERR, according to the question presented on the programme.
The idea behind the puzzle was to take letters from HIGHER and LOWER alternately, starting with the first letter of HIGHER, followed by the first letter of LOWER, and continuing through the words.
That simple instruction made the question much harder than it initially appeared. With three very similar-looking strings of letters on screen and only half a minute to work things out, even contestants who had successfully navigated the earlier questions were caught out.
The result was that 11 players failed to identify the required combination at the 70% stage.
So, how would you have fared with only 30 seconds on the clock?
Another recent puzzle left players struggling
The letters challenge was far from the only question on the programme to leave contestants scratching their heads.
Another recent puzzle involved Coronation Street and asked players to spot the difference between two images.
Lee showed the contestants two pictures of the familiar Corrie pub, with one detail changed between them.
The difference was in the pub’s name.
In the image on the right, the sign read “Ravers” rather than “Rovers”, creating a small but crucial change that contestants had to spot.
Why The 1% Club questions can be so difficult
The format of The 1% Club is designed to make contestants rely on reasoning rather than facts they might have memorised.
Each episode begins with 100 contestants, and the questions become progressively more difficult as the game continues. Contestants start with £1,000, but an incorrect answer eliminates them and their money goes into the prize pot. The ultimate challenge is the 1% question, with a top prize of up to £100,000.
That format can make apparently ordinary tasks surprisingly challenging. A question involving familiar words or a straightforward image can become difficult once contestants have a strict time limit and several almost identical answers to choose between.
And that was exactly what happened with the HIGHER and LOWER puzzle.
Would you have spotted the correct sequence in 30 seconds?