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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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Good suggestion. I tested the same puzzle on GPT-4 instead of GPT-4o. It generated a correct solution on the first attempt:

To successfully transport all three creatures (grog, grindle, and grue) across the river without any of them eating each other, you can follow these steps:

  1. First trip: Take the grog and the grue across the river.
  2. Return trip: Leave the grog on the other side and bring the grue back.
  3. Second trip: Take the grindle across the river.
  4. Return trip: Leave the grindle on the other side and bring the grog back.
  5. Final trip: Take the grog and the grue across the river again.

Now, all three are on the other side of the river safely. At no point were the grog and the grue left alone without you present, nor were the grindle and the grue left alone.

I was looking for it to just take the grog and grindle on the first trip (since they cannot eat each other) and then return for the grue, but it may have interpreted the rules as requiring that two creatures be taken at a time (as @confuciuscorndog suggested should be formally stated). Those rules would probably pattern match better to its training corpus.