I Gave the Hardest Cryptic Crossword I Could Find to a Bunch of LLMs
A journalist tests the capabilities of modern Large Language Models by challenging them to solve a notoriously difficult Australian cryptic crossword. The article explores whether AI can replicate the human-like creative perversity required for complex wordplay.
Why it matters
It highlights the evolving boundaries of AI reasoning and its ability to handle linguistic nuance and cultural context in non-standard tasks.
So this morning I woke to the news that Firefox would be adding a daily AI-powered crossword to its ever more cluttered content-rich new tab page. This is all well and good, but it also got me thinking about something. I love a good cryptic crossword, and… well, if there’s one form of crossword with which surely AI would struggle, it’s that most perverse and curiously human of puzzles, the cryptic crossword.
I bet that none of the consumer LLMs could make any sort of fist of tackling a proper cryptic. Right? Well, it seems that I’m not the only one thinking about this—and it also turns out that perhaps I’m wrong.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in