Any keen quizzers will almost certainly have come across the following question:

If you write out every number as a word, which is the first (and only) one to have all of its letters in alphabetical order?

In case you don’t know the answer, you can work it out for yourself by starting with one, then working through two, three and so on. If you get to one hundred you have gone too far and missed it.

If you still haven’t got there, the answer appears after the next paragraph.

This question is such a classic that I included it in my first piece about Trivia in this Menu Item drafted in 2016 which concludes with 7 old favourites, along with the answers.

As you probably know (and the title of this piece gives it away), the answer is FORTY. If you’re in a hurry you might think that EIGHT is correct, but the “I” is in the wrong place. And if you mistakenly spell forty as “fourty” you will skip past it.

This question has featured in the last year on “The 1% Club”, the ITV Saturday night quiz hosted by Lee Mack. The show’s website describes it as “a quiz where the questions have nothing to do with remembering facts and are all about logic and common sense”. True enough in this case: you can work out the answer, with enough time, and if you can spell “forty”.

Last summer my daughter and I were watching a late-night repeat of the episode where this was the 1% question (that is, a question that only 1% of the population are expected to answer correctly). We both got the answer immediately. My daughter (16 at the time) was surprised it was so easy. But it was only easy because I taught her this when she was about 8, and have reminded her of it more than once in the intervening years.

A lone contestant was playing for a jackpot of £98,000 and couldn’t work out the answer. If he and I had ever met and chatted about Trivia there’s a strong chance that I would have mentioned this question, along with my absolute favourite: What is the only station on the London Underground that contains the letter Z? I explain why I find this question so useful in this earlier piece about the names of tube stations.

“The 1% Club”, and the question that opened this piece, came up repeatedly on Christmas Day. Our host and her son are fans of the show. They even have the board game. I mentioned a few of the other questions that I remembered from watching the show, as well as explaining how much a contestant could have won if he knew about “forty”.

I wrote out the following and asked “What do V and C stand for in the following sequence?”

VCCCVCCCVCCCCCVCCCCCVCCCCC

That question stumped me earlier this year. On another day I might have got it, but not while watching, with the clock ticking.

Well done if you worked out that the sequence represents the alphabet: V = Vowel and C = Consonant. I would get it now if the question came up again, but this was the first time I had seen it.

Later in the afternoon we got the board game out but didn’t attempt to play a proper game. Instead I went through scores of the more straightforward questions (starting with the 90% options) before realizing that I should have started with the 1% questions. I didn’t have time to read them all but the two that I have transcribed in this piece came up very quickly.

If you take part in enough quizzes I guarantee that the question that prompted this piece will come up again. You might even win a few bob for knowing the answer, though maybe not the £98,000 that was on offer on “The 1% Club”.

In the meantime you could check if this challenge works in other languages. In French, for example, three of the first 10 numbers (and no others) all have their letters in alphabetical order: 2 (DEUX), 5 (CINQ) and 10 (DIX). Take those three numbers and create the following formula:

(10-2) x 5

You know the answer, right? Forty.

a