“FIVE FINALISTS THOUGHT £97,000 WAS WITHIN REACH… THEN ONE BRUTAL PUZZLE TOOK EVERYTHING AWAY.” What looked like the perfect ending on The 1% Club turned into complete heartbreak when five contestants reached the final question with a massive £97,000 jackpot still alive, only to be defeated by the exact same hidden trap. Some answered confidently, others hesitated until the final seconds, and one contestant couldn’t even bring themselves to submit a guess as the pressure became overwhelming. Then came the devastating reveal that left the studio groaning in unison — because the solution suddenly seemed so obvious that nobody could believe they had missed it. The cruel reality of The 1% Club isn’t that the questions are impossible; it’s that the answer often appears only after the money is gone.

The 1% Club wiped out all five finalists with a very tough final question.

It meant that the £97,000 prize pot up for grabs went to waste with not one single player getting the correct answer.

After a few shock early exits and surprisingly easier later questions, show host Lee Mack remained hopeful that one of the five on the floor could arrive at the correct answer.

Reading out the final question, Lee poised to the players: “What new word links the capitalised words below?”

He then read aloud this sentence which featured certain words capitalised: “My SON TED ate raw FOOD and got SICK, then went to BED with me by his SIDE.”

Thirty seconds were then put on the clock with the five remaining players hoping to get to the correct answer.

With the time up, Lee went round the men one-by-one to which they all gave different answers.

Whilst one admitted that he hadn’t even wrote anything down, another said they had picked “well” as their answers before someone else opted for “new”.

Unfortunately, all of them arrived at the incorrect answer.

Lee then went on to reveal how the correct answer was in fact, sea.

This is because “sea” could be placed at the start of each of the capitalised words in order to create another word.

Adding “sea” to “son” creates season whilst adding it to “ted”, created seated.

The same policy applied for the rest of the words.

It left Lee in disbelief as the prize pot had to be abandoned with none of them walking away with any money.

Earlier in the same show, a whopping 16 players were wiped out on only the second question.

The 80% question caught them out early and it featured three pictures, a ball of string, a metallic square and a cloud with a face making a blowing motion.

The question read: “In this cryptic puzzle, where would you find the following images?”

The options were: “In an orchestra, In a cinema or On a football pitch”.

Lee revealed the answer was ‘In an orchestra’ as the pictures represented string, brass and wind, which are all sections of an orchestra.