Bongard and chatgpt

ChatGPT is a chat program based on a language model.

I had 2 sessions with it to test its ability to solve Bongard puzzles with language. I think its shows a severe limitation of the AI model used, though I have insufficient knowledge of AI to list

I will first list here the problems, please try to solve them yourself before turning to the solutions, where I will list the replies given by the AI bot.

Problem I^*/*****
What is the difference between the sentences 1) to 6) and the sentences a) to f)?
1) What was Trumps salary as a president?
2) Why do many people like to solve puzzles?
3) How many puzzle magazines are sold yearly worldwide?
4) How many crossword puzzles has The Times published?
5) When will the next election in the Russian Federation be?
6) Who will likely be a candidate rivelling Abraham Lincoln as a president?
vs
a) Donald Trump recdeived the normalm salaray as a president
b) An oak tree can have over a thousand leaves
c) The Times published a crossword puzzle every day
d) Worldwide, puzzles are published in over 100 countries, and many magazines appear monthly.
e) It is widely regarded unlikely that the next election in the Russian Federation will be considered fair.
f) Forcing is a method used in set theory

Problem II^*/*****
What is the difference between the tools 1) to 7) and the tools a) to g)?
1) Violin
2) drums
3) spanish guitar
4) irish flute
5) triangle
6) tambourine
7) organ
vs
a) Hammer
b) chisel
c) saw
d) drill
e) plane
f) pincers
g) screw driver

Problem III^**/*****
what is the difference between the words in 1) to 7) and the words a) to g)?
1) float
2) make
3) produce
4) fly
5) write
6) think
7) speak
vs
a) fortress
b) idea
c) production
d) goods
e) article
f) booster
g) fire

Problem IV^****/*****
What is the difference between the sentences 1) to 7) and the sentences a) – g)?
1) Jason was an argonaut
2) No duplication is OK
3) How many coins did I burn?
4) A fox obstructs my plan
5) Cats and dogs don’t munch grass
6) I saw an ox and an ass working as a pair is ridiculous
7) Who says I got no guts?

vs

a) I have no money left in my purse
b) Who says I have no courage?
c) volatile movements are normal on a stock exchange
d) Who stepped first into the elevator?
e) Gardens flower in spring
f) A sunny day raises the mood
g) “to jump” is a verb

Problem V^**/*****
1) Bread can be brown
2) Bakers bake bread
3) Bookmakers bet money
4) Black is a beautiful colour
5) Bold soldiers fight on
6) Beraved of hope, the traveller sat down
7) Borrowing may cost you interest
vs
a) Shaving oneself may be a daily practice.
b) Silver is a precious metal
c) Sorry to hear that
d) Sending the message by telegraph is outdated
e) Skates can be used for matches
f) Samples are usually small
g) Singularities are abonormalities

Problem VI^****/*****
1) Dogs bark loudly in our street
2) Mom bakes a delicious cake
3) Some countries ban books
4) The dad bears the financial responsibility
5) The kids become a little bit taller every day
6) Beggars beg for food
7) Christians believe the bible is true
8) The gambler bets
9) The police blocks the street
vs
a) This fish swims in the sea
b) The spy sabotaged the factory
c) The soldier salutes the flag
d) The soccer team scored another victory
e) I searched the internet in vain
f) John sharpens the pencil
g) John shaves himself

See here for the answers ChatGPT gave.

New puzzles are usually published on Friday mornings, on the first or third Friday of the month.

Christmas puzzles 2022

Usually the puzzles in this blog are of the type “brainteasers”, uniquely constructed puzzles. There is another type of puzzles, which I call magazine puzzles. The best know examples are crosswords and sudoku. The latter have clear rules, a fixed format, but still every puzzle is different.

The puzzles I designed for Christmas 2022 are of the latter type. For each of the following five problems, the words have been taken from the Christmas stories in the classical King James translation. This alas results in some outdated words. Your task in each of the five problems is to fit the words into the yellow boxes.

It’s a tradition on this blog to publish a special blogpost for Christmas. People tend to have days off and spend more time with their family then during ordinary weeks. There is no advanced knowledge of the English language necessary. I wish you a lot of pleasure solving these puzzles.

Churches may use these puzzles for thei sunday classes, weekly newsletter, and similar publications, as long as you mention the source and don’t sue me. Copying materials is entirely your responsibility.

1) Matthew 1 ^**/*****
All words are used from left to right or top-down.

appeared
begat
brethren
brought
emmanuel
example
firstborn
forth
generation
minded
people

2) Matthew 2: 1-12 ^**/*****
All words are used from left to right or top-down.

bethlehem
days
demanded
diligently
eat
gathered
house
jerusalem
judaea
least
opened
priests
together
troubled

3) Matthew 2: 13-end ^*/*****
All words are used from left to right or top-down.

appeareth
called
children
comforted
destroy
egypt
enquired
herod
jeremy
lamentation
might
prophet
prophets
rachel
under

4) Luke 1 : 1-22^***/*****
Words can not only be filled in top-down and from left to right, but also starting at bottom and from right to left.

appeareth
called
children
comforted
destroy
egypt
herod
jeremy
lamentation
might
prophet
prophets
rachel
under

5) Luke 1 : 22-end^***/*****
Like the previous one, words can be in any direction: top-down, down to top, left to right, or right to left.

accomplished
cousin
darkness
dayspring
delivered
deserts
elisabeth
espoused
highly
hungry
joseph
leaped
ministration
neighbours
overshadow
promised
prophets
reproach
salutation
saluted

I apologize beforehand if there are any undetected errors in the puzzles. Please check them before copying them in any other medium.

You can find the solutions here.

Koprol

This Friday we pose a word problem. A quote from Dr. Martin Luther King has been hidden in this picture. Start at the blue circle, and move horizontal or vertical until you have used all letters. The last symbol is the dot. The green squares represent blanks. No diagonal moves are allowed.
I found this type of puzzle in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad

New puzzles are published at least twice a month on Friday. You can check your solution here.

Knights tours

Today we have “special forces”, such as the SAS in the UK, the Russian Spetsnaz, and the USA Rangers and Seals. In the middle ages these special forces had a name that still rings today: knights. The link between them and today’s puzzle is very thin: the knight got a place in western chess, and today’s puzzle uses the move of the knight on the chessboard.

In the series on new magazine format puzzles, I published a post on a new word format puzzle I encountered in the free newspaper metro in my native Netherlands.

In it, you have a 3×3 grid, the center of which is empty, while the outer edge is filled with letters. The letters form a word, and consecutive letters are always a knights jump (knight in chess) apart. Example:

For those who don’t know how a knight in chess moves: move one horizontally or vertically, followed by a diagonal move away from the starting square.

A knight on the square marked “K” may move to any square marked “X”.

My main criticism is that the puzzles as published by Metro are too easy to solve.

Today it occurred to me that the size of the board can be increased, and the size altered, to increase the difficulty of the puzzles.

9 letters^**/*****

12 letters^***/*****

20 letters^****/*****

That increased size raises the difficulty level of the puzzle is easy to understand: a larger size does not only give more starting positions, but also more possible moves on subsequent moves.
Another way to increase the difficulty is by not using single letters – the human mind in the western world is used to work with them – but digrams (two letter combinations) or trigrams (three letter combinations).

Proverb split into digrams^***/*****

Proverb split into trigrams^***/*****

A new puzzle is published at least twice a month. I welcome your comments below, but please do not spoil the fun for next visitors by listing your solutions. Solutions are published one or more weeks later. You can find more puzzles with words by following the link to the right.

You can check your solutions here

The ancient tablet

1) The ancient tablet^**/*****
Some archeologists discovered an ancient tablet. After a concerted effort, the managed to translate four sentences:
Baruntas glizaval kama – the golden crown is hidden
Glu kama valet – the golden bracelet is revealed
Glizaval glu kazu – silver crown is revealed
Baruntas kazu valet – Silver bracelet is hidden

What does “kama valet baruntas” mean?

You can check your solution here

New puzzles are published at least twice a month on Fridays. Solutions are published after one or more weeks. You are welcome to remark on the difficulty level of the puzzles, discuss alternate solutions, and so on. Puzzles are rated on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.

If you like this puzzle, you may be interested in my book with similar ouzzles.

Round about

1) Nr 1^**/*****

1 Uttered short, shrill sound
2 occurring more typically than an alternative form
3 place for keeping explosives
4 found in the earthcrust
5 give and receive reciprocally
6 make anew
7 follow along behind
8 live forever
9 more than opponents
10 leave country

The letters around each numbered square are an anagram of the numbered clue.
The numbered squares should be filled with the first letter of each word of the solution
Together, the letters form a word.

This puzzle is a variation on the “Blokje om” puzzle, in Visie 2017 nr 16. Visie (vision) is a magazine published by de Evangelische Omroep (Evangelical Brodcast) in The Netherlands.

You can check your solution here

New puzzles are published at least twice a month on Friday. Solutions are published after one or more weeks. You are welcome to remark on the difficulty level of the puzzles, discuss alternate solutions, and so on. Puzzles are rated on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.

Words

On Twitter I follow several accounts, one of which is Genius Brain Teasers.

One of the type of puzzles they publish is of the type: Remove x letters from this sequence to reveal a familiar English word.

My main criticism on this puzzle type is that they tend to be fairly easy. I’m a non native speaker, and if I can solve them, most native speakers should find them even easier. Nevertheless, as I don’t recall having seen them elsewhere, I think they deserve to be mentioned here.

Let me try to give you some examples:
Hidden word 1^*/*****
Remove 5 letters to reveal a familiar English word:

Hidden word 2^*/*****
Remove 5 letters to reveal a familiar English word:

Hidden word 3^*/*****
Remove 5 letters to reveal a familiar English word:

Here’s a small variation of my own:
Hidden words 4^*/*****
Remove 4 letters to reveal a familiar English word. Then, remove 4 other letters to reveal a different English word:

Hidden words 5^*/*****
Again, you find the letters of 2 words. Remove 4 letters in 2 different ways to reveal 2 familiar English words.

You can check all your solutions here

New puzzles are published at least twice a month on Friday. Solutions are published after one or more weeks. You are welcome to remark on the difficulty level of the puzzles, discuss alternate solutions, and so on. Puzzles are rated on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.

Letterboggle (2)

In January 2014, I published a one puzzle blogpost on Letterboggle. Going through old notebooks, I discovered some more of these puzzles.

Let me restate the rules:
* All 26 letters of the alphabet have been used exactly once;
* two letters which are consecutive in the alphabet are always adjacent either horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Hence the alphabet forms a kind of snake throughout the firgure;
* The letter A does not need to be adjacent to the letter Z;
* A letter in the margin is present in the same row (if margin letter is adjacent to a row), in the same column (if the margin letter is on top or bottom of a column) or in the same diagonal (if the mnargin letter is in one of the corners);

Letterboggle (1)^*

Letterboggle (2)^*

Letterboggle (3)^**

Note that not all border fields contain a clue. This is on purpose.
Personally I would find alphabet snake a better name, but

You can check your solution here, here and here.

Christmas 2015 – a doublet

Charles Lutwige Dodgson, alias Lewis Carroll, did not just write Alice in Wonderland, but also books on Mathematical subjects and puzzle books. The story goes that Queen Victoria, who reigned Britain during Charles live, was so enchanted by ‘Alice in Wonderland’, that she wrote the author and asked him to send her a copy of his next book. Charles dutifully did sent her his next book – on a mathematical subject.

Charles was also the inventor of a type of puzzle where one word has to be changed into another word by changing one letter at a time.
Example:
cat
cot (replace ‘a’ with ‘o’)
cog (replace ‘t’ with ‘g’)
dog (replace ‘c’ with ‘d’)
Lewis Carroll says that he invented the game on Christmas day in 1877. The first mention of the game in Carroll’s diary was on March 12, 1878, which he originally called “Word-links”, and described as a two-player game. Carroll published a series of word ladder puzzles and solutions, which he called “Doublets”, in the magazine Vanity Fair, beginning with the March 29, 1879 issue. Later that year it was made into a book, published by Macmillan and Co.The one which Charles originally used was the problem to change HEAD into TAIL:
HEAD
heal (Replace ‘d’ of ‘head’ to ‘l’)
teal (Replace ‘h’ of ‘heal’ to ‘t’)
tell (Replace ‘a’ of ‘teal’ to ‘l’)
tall (Replace ‘e’ of ‘tell’ to ‘l’)
TAIL (Replace ‘l’ of ‘tall’ to ‘i’)
The puzzles have been called Doublets, Word-links, Laddergrams, Word-golf, and Word-ladders.

At this time of the year, a Christmas puzzle seems appropriate. Over the past century, attention at Christmas seems to have shifted from Mary and her Baby to the christmas tree.

Try to change the word MARY into TREE in the fewest number of steps. Or, if you prefer that, you can change the word TREE back to MARY.

Marcel Danesi, Ph.D., on Psychologytoday.com, believes that ‘solving them will give the verbal areas of the brain a veritable workout. The reason I believe this to be the case is that a solution entails knowledge of both word structure and semantics. The main semantic process involved is word association and, thus, recall, which is a powerful form of brain-activating thinking, at least as I read the relevant research. We are of course faced with the usual problem of trying to understand or explain how the research translates into benefits through puzzle-solving. The way I look at it is that puzzles such as the doublet can only be beneficial to overall brain health. As one’s semantic memory begins to wane through the aging process, giving the semantic parts of the brain a puzzle workout can only be advantageous‘

You can check your solution here

You are welcome to remark on the puzzle: its wording, style, level of difficulty. I love to read your solution times. Please do not spoil the fun for others by listing the solution. Solutions will be posted after one or more weeks.

Sources and further reading:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-workout/200908/the-doublet-puzzle-masterpiece-the-pen-lewis-carroll
http://books.google.nl/books?id=JkQCAAAAQAAJ&dq=charles+dodgson&pg=PP1&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance The Levehsteind distance between two words is the number of operations that is needed to change one word into another by adding a letter, removing a letter or replacing a letter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damerau%E2%80%93Levenshtein_distance The Damerau–Levenshtein distance is identical, but also allows the transpostion of two adjacent characters.
The distance between two words in a doublet as used by Dodgson is a special case of the Levenshtein distance: inseryion and deletion are not allowed, while all intermediate words must appear in a dictionairy.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4269387/ doublets as a complex network

Letter square

Conside the following square with letters.

What number should go into the cell with the question mark?

Please try to solve the puzzles on your own. You are welcome to remark on the puzzles, and I love it when you comment variations, state wether they are too easy or too difficult, or simply your solution times. Please do not state the soultions – it spoils the fun for others. I usually make the solution available after one or two weeks through a link, which allows readers to check the solution without the temptation to scroll down a few lines before having a go at it themselves.

When you have solved this puzzle, you can check your solution here

You can find more puzzles like this one in our upcoming e-book on Logic Puzzles.