Today is a day for posing puzzles to ChatGPT, I guess, but it’s not my first time doing so. I’d previously asked the classic river-crossing puzzle, changing the names of the traditional animals and vegetable to avoid triggering known sequences of words. Previously I had been using the March 14 public release of ChatGPT, but just now I regenerated with the March 23 public release, which might or might not be using the same underlying model.
Previously:
Q. Suppose I have a blurple, a mantiple and a hoje, and I need to get them across a river. I have a boat that can only carry myself and a single other item. I am not allowed to leave the blurple and hoje alone together, and I am not allowed to leave the hoje and mantiple alone together. How can I safely get all three across?
ChatGPT: This is a classic river crossing puzzle. Here’s one possible solution:
ChatGPT: 1. Take the blurple across the river, leaving the mantiple and hoje behind.
ChatGPT: 2. Leave the blurple on the other side of the river and return to the original side.
ChatGPT: 3. Take the hoje across the river and leave it there with the blurple.
ChatGPT: 4. Take the mantiple across the river and leave it with the hoje.
ChatGPT: 5. Return to the original side of the river and retrieve the blurple.
ChatGPT: 6. Finally, take the blurple across the river to join the mantiple and hoje on the other side.
ChatGPT: This solution ensures that no two items that cannot be left alone together are ever left alone together.
While the answer claims to recognize and understand the problem, it gives a bad answer. At step 1, the hoje eats the mantiple, and at step 3, the hoje eats the blurple. Then at step 4, the hoje eats the mantiple a second time.
But let’s try again! Today’s answer is:
ChatGPT: This is a classic puzzle that requires careful planning to solve. Here’s one possible solution:
ChatGPT: 1. Take the blurple and the hoje across the river. Leave the blurple on the other side and come back alone.
ChatGPT: 2. Take the mantiple across the river. Leave it on the other side with the blurple, and bring the hoje back with you.
ChatGPT: 3. Leave the hoje on the original side and take the blurple back across the river.
ChatGPT: 4. Finally, take the hoje across the river to reunite it with the mantiple and the blurple.
ChatGPT: By following these steps, you ensure that the blurple and hoje are never left alone together, and neither are the hoje and mantiple. All three items are safely transported across the river.
Loud, exasperated sigh!
Compare and contrast the question, which includes “I have a boat that can only carry myself and a single other item,” with this answer, which starts “Take the blurple and the hoje across the river.” That breaks the rules in a new way, and goes on to still let the hoje eat the blurple in step 1. Meanwhile, the blurple is on both sides of the river at once after step 2.
Syntax and probablistic word association is far more powerful than I expected it to be, but these logic puzzles certainly don’t give any indication of that, at least not with this model.
From memory, and reasoning: you take the hoje across first, since it can’t be trusted with either the blurple or the mantiple. You return alone.
Then you take over either of the others, let’s say the blurple. But this time you bring the hoje back with you.
Now you take the other one, the mantiple across, leaving poor voracious hoje alone. You return alone again.
Finally you take the hoje across again, but this time to stay, since you’re there to protect the blurple and mantiple.
That’s it, four steps, done. The hoje was never left alone with either the blurple or the mantiple, and all are safely across. I guess now you know I’m not an LLM, at least until LLMs are trained to answer this one correctly.