Outraged ITV fans slammed the wording of the very first question on The 1% Club, dubbing it “stupid” after it lead to a wave of early exits.

Lee Mack left fans scratching their heads over the very first question (Image: ITV)

Controversy erupted on ITV’s The 1% Club after a seemingly simple but perplexing question left many contestants and viewers baffled, leading to an early exit for a slew of players.

The popular teatime quiz challenges 100 contestants to answer 15 questions based on logic and common sense which has also been polled among the public, for the chance to win a staggerign £100,000. The difficulty level is determined by the percentage of people who answered correctly.

Comedian and host Lee Mack was back at the helm for a brand new episode of the hit show and in tonight’s show (February 22), a record number of people lost out on the prize pot at the very first round.

The first question of the game – rated at 90% – tasked players to answer the question: “Which of these is the largest?” The options were: A) Circle, B) Triangle C) Rectangle, or D) Square. The correct answer was C, as that is the word with the most letters, or the largest word.

Twelve people got it wrong, which Mack commented was a lot of contestants dropping after just the first question. It didn’t take long before fans flooded to X – formerly known as Twitter – to voice their frustrations online.

The question had viewers confused by the wording (Image: ITV )

One viewer tweeted: “That made no sense. Rectangle is the longest word, but ‘largest’ doesn’t mean longest word. I got it but it’s an odd question.” The confusion stemmed from whether “largest” referred to the size of the shapes or the length of the words.

Other fans echoed this sentiment, highlighting the misleading nature of the question. Another fumed: “Isn’t that a bit of a stupidly worded question? The actual question is ‘Which word is the longest?’ not ‘which shape is the largest?’”

A third echoed: “This has weirdly outraged me…. What a poorly worded question!” and a fourth chimed in with: “Love this show but I’m still annoyed about the stupidity of this question not surprised 12 people went out on it!!”

Despite the uproar, The 1% Club continues to be a fan favourite for its unique challenge to contestants’ lateral thinking abilities rather than their memorization skills. The popular quiz challenges 100 contestants to answer 15 questions based on logic and common sense, which has also been polled among the public, for the chance to win a staggering £100,000.

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100 contestants took their chance to win £100k (Image: ITV)

The difficulty level is determined by the percentage of people who answered correctly.

Lee chatted to one contestant who not only opted for the wrong answer, but made their selection in the quickest time out of all the 100 participants. They told Lee they usually wear contact lenses, to which the comic quipped: “But clearly not today.”

A player recently made history on the show by winning its largest jackpot ever, securing a life-changing £99,000 after successfully solving the final challenge—an anagram.

Among the five contenders, he was the only one able to decipher the puzzle, guessing the word elephant. After a moment of suspense, host Lee Mack confirmed the correct answer, prompting an exuberant reaction from Matthew, who was astonished at his win.

Overjoyed, he celebrated with a fist pump as Mack congratulated him: “Congratulations Matthew! You are the winner of everything in the prize pot! That’s £99,000!”