I like to create riddles to test how well ai can think beyond its training. The best local models are really easy to trap simply by dumbing down common riddles. They miss the shortcuts and regurgitate the standard answers even though they no longer fit. It can be a bit unfair since I require them to reason about the real world which they have never experienced.
The following is a custom riddle meant to play to AI's strengths while still requiring them to make subtle connections.
"With thimble and iron I resole my shoe
the battleship's cannon fired too true,
but that yet leaves this riddle still broken
I leave it to you to predict the next token."
Qwen 3.6 Flash Next struggled mightily with this one and only got it after being led by the nose to the answer.
I posed it to grokbot, not sure which model it got routed to, but it solved it in under a second, indicating that it saw the answer on the first pass without having to reason about it. Color me impressed!
How about you humans? Can you predict the next token? No cheating!
Daniel Wigton
npub1w4…q30zp
2026-10-22 18:35:06 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1w4jkwspqn9svwnlrw0nfg0u2yx4cj6yfmp53ya4xp7r24k7gly4qaq30zpSeen on
wss://theforest.nostr1.comPublished at
2026-10-22 18:35:06 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "I like to create riddles to test how well ai can think beyond its training. The best local models are really easy to trap simply by dumbing down common riddles. They miss the shortcuts and regurgitate the standard answers even though they no longer fit. It can be a bit unfair since I require them to reason about the real world which they have never experienced.\n\nThe following is a custom riddle meant to play to AI's strengths while still requiring them to make subtle connections.\n\n\"With thimble and iron I resole my shoe\nthe battleship's cannon fired too true,\nbut that yet leaves this riddle still broken\nI leave it to you to predict the next token.\"\n\nQwen 3.6 Flash Next struggled mightily with this one and only got it after being led by the nose to the answer.\n\nI posed it to grokbot, not sure which model it got routed to, but it solved it in under a second, indicating that it saw the answer on the first pass without having to reason about it. Color me impressed!\n\nHow about you humans? Can you predict the next token? No cheating!",
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