25 Contestants Were Sent Home by This ‘Easy’ 1% Club Picture Question

A picture question that appeared to be one of the simplest on The 1% Club left 25 contestants facing elimination after just 30 seconds.

The question came relatively early in the game and was labelled an 80% question, meaning it was expected to be answered correctly by the vast majority of players. Instead, a surprisingly large number got it wrong, leaving host Lee Mack visibly taken aback.

The challenge was simple. Contestants were shown two images and asked to work out the phrase they represented.

Can you solve it in 30 seconds?

The question displayed a clock alongside a pair of flies.

Lee Mack asked:

What two-word phrase does this code represent?

Contestants had only 30 seconds to enter their answers before the clock ran out.

When the answers were revealed, 25 players had failed to identify the intended phrase and were eliminated.

Lee admitted he had not expected so many contestants to get the question wrong.

The answer was time flies, combining the image of the clock representing time with the picture of the flies.

The correct answer was Incy Wincy, because it continued the rhyming pattern established by the characters in the sequence.

One contestant, Sharon Swift, explained why she had selected Incy Wincy, saying she had chosen the character because he was a spider while the others were, in her view, more like people.

Lee quickly turned the reasoning into one of his trademark jokes.

He pointed out that the other characters were not real people either, adding that he did not think any of them were human.

A quiz where common sense matters more than knowledge

These questions demonstrate what makes The 1% Club different from a conventional quiz show.

The programme begins with 100 contestants, with players gradually eliminated as the questions become more difficult. The ultimate challenge is the 1% question, which is designed to be answered correctly by only a tiny proportion of the population.

Rather than testing contestants on obscure facts, the show focuses on logic, patterns and common sense. That also allows viewers at home to play along and see how they fare against the contestants.

And sometimes, as the time flies question demonstrated, even an answer that appears obvious can become surprisingly difficult when the clock is counting down.

The 1% Club airs on ITV1 and ITVX.