A seemingly simple question on The 1% Club left viewers sharply divided, with fans arguing over whether the show’s official answer was correct.
The latest episode of Lee Mack’s ITV quiz saw contestants confronted with a sequence of letters containing hidden animal names. But when the answer was revealed, social media erupted over one particular inclusion: ant.
The question asked:
“Without reordering any letters, how many animals appear in the sequence below?”
The sequence was:
PHEASANTORTOISEALION
Contestants and viewers were challenged to identify how many animal names appeared without rearranging the letters.
Viewers clash over the answer
Lee Mack eventually revealed that the intended answer was six.
The animals were pheasant, sealion, ant, seal, tortoise and lion.
But many viewers immediately objected to the inclusion of ant, arguing that an insect should not be counted as an animal.
One viewer posted: “An ant is NOT an animal! Outrage!”
Another argued that a pheasant is a bird, an ant is an insect, while seal and sealion are mammals, leaving what they believed should be just two animals: lion and tortoise.
“If the question was ‘how many creatures…’ then it’s 6. Bad question wording,” they wrote.
Others simply repeated the objection: “Ant is an insect not an animal!”
However, another group of viewers pointed out that insects are, in fact, animals.
“The amount of people on the hashtag saying an ant isn’t an animal,” one person wrote.
Another added: “Yes an ant is an animal. All insects are.”
A further viewer agreed, explaining that ants are insects and therefore arthropods, just like spiders, crustaceans, centipedes and millipedes.
The disagreement turned the relatively straightforward quiz question into one of the episode’s biggest talking points.
How does The 1% Club work?
The 1% Club puts 100 contestants through a series of 15 questions designed to test logic, lateral thinking and general reasoning.
The questions become progressively more difficult, beginning with one that was answered correctly by 90 per cent of the people surveyed and eventually reaching the notoriously difficult 1% question.
The winner can potentially take home a share of a £100,000 prize pot.
The show is hosted by comedian Lee Mack.
One contestant chooses to leave with £2,000
Later in the episode, just five contestants remained as they faced the final 1% question.
They were offered the opportunity to take £10,000 between them, meaning each contestant would leave with £2,000, rather than risk losing the money by attempting the final question.
One player, Christopher, decided to take the guaranteed £2,000 and leave the competition.
The remaining contestants chose to continue.
They were then presented with another puzzle:
“The words below share a specific pattern. Why could VOTING also be part of the group?”
The words given were Bandleader, Nickelodeo and Silverback.
Only one contestant attempted an answer, but it was incorrect. As a result, none of the players who continued with the final question took home any money.
Viewers call the final question surprisingly easy
Lee Mack later explained the pattern.
Each word contained the name of a metal: lead, nickel, silver and tin.
The reveal prompted another wave of reactions from viewers, many of whom said they had spotted the pattern almost immediately.
One viewer described it as “the easiest 1% question I can remember” and said they were surprised that none of the contestants had figured it out.
Another claimed they solved it within five seconds, pointing to silver and nickel at the beginning of two of the words and tin appearing in “voting”.
A third viewer said their 12-year-old child had also worked it out.
Another simply commented that the question seemed unusually easy for a 1% challenge.
Other quiz questions that left viewers stumped
The episode’s animal debate was not the first time a television quiz question had sparked controversy among viewers.
On Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, host Jeremy Clarkson previously asked which letter had never begun the surname of a Best Actress Oscar winner from the 2000 awards ceremony onward.
The options were G, K, M and W. Contestant Glen, who had already secured £32,000, chose G—and the answer proved correct, with stars including Nicole Kidman, Frances McDormand and Kate Winslet among the actresses who had won the award since 2000.
The 1% Club has also produced questions that left contestants and viewers scratching their heads.
One particularly complicated puzzle involved Edna’s birthday being April 6 and Jen’s being October 15, with contestants asked to determine Amir’s January birthday. The solution depended on the positions of the numbers within the wording of the sentence, making Amir’s birthday January 24.
And on The Chase, contestants were once asked what someone with a nightshade intolerance should avoid eating, with sweetcorn, potatoes and carrots offered as the choices. Steve selected sweetcorn, while the correct answer was potatoes.
For The 1% Club viewers, however, the question about the ant proved to be a different kind of challenge—not because of complicated logic, but because of a disagreement over the meaning of the word “animal.”
The 1% Club airs on ITV1 and is available to stream on ITVX.
