What Puzzle Am I Looking For?
Here are the requirements for the puzzle I want:
Takes hours for a human to solve (10+ hours). Solvable virtually. Solvable by even an average 10 year old.
Not solvable by a machine — or at least takes a machine significantly longer than a human (e.g., 10× longer than a human solver). If a human can code up a program to solve this, that counts as solvable by machine.
Quick to verify (ideally seconds).
Mass-generatable by either a human or a computer (I should be able to produce many instances easily).
Requirements #1 and #2 are mandatory. Any puzzle that fails either of these is immediately disqualified.
For #3, I can tolerate verification taking up to 5 minutes. I can also tolerate verification procedures that are probabilistic — for example, ones that confirm correctness with 95% confidence instead of 100%.
For #4, Assuming requirements #1–#3 are satisfied, the quality of a puzzle is judged mainly by how easily it can be mass-generated. Ideally:
Tier 1: A puzzle that a human can generate in under 5 minutes, without using code or an LLM.
Tier 2: A puzzle generated by simple code (I know “simple” is subjective, but I'll use my own judgment).
Tire 3: A puzzle that can only be generated with the help of an LLM
Example of simple code: Generally codes that doesnt require the use of LLM, involving simple logics.
For example, code that piece together a bunch of smaller images into a bigger image is rather simple. code that does arithmetic calculations are rather simple.
I will award the person coming up with the best puzzle a 5000 mana prize.
If someone came up with a qualified Tier 1 puzzle I will resolve the market immediately. If no one managed to come up with a Tier 1 puzzle I will resolve the market based on the best (mass-generatable) proposed puzzle at the end of 2025.
Update 2025-11-22 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Machine compute limit clarification: When evaluating whether a puzzle is "not solvable by a machine" or takes significantly longer for machines, the machine is limited to using one GPU that costs less than $1000.
Update 2025-11-22 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Additional requirement added: The puzzle must be solvable by someone without programming knowledge or without knowledge of any highly specific domain. The spirit is that solving it takes time, but doesn't require high intelligence so virtually anyone can do it.
Mass-generatability clarification: For puzzles that are variations of a specific concept (like fairy chess), the creator would need to come up with different puzzle types (not just variations of the same puzzle) that are not solvable by LLM.
Update 2025-11-22 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Puzzles that require another human to be involved in the solving process (e.g., instructing someone to build a Lego set blindfolded) are not considered mass-generatable and do not qualify.
Update 2025-11-22 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has expressed concern that Spatial CAPTCHA puzzles may not meet the mass-generatability requirement (Requirement #4). Specifically, the creator questions whether such puzzles can be generated in less than 5 minutes while still being complicated enough to take 10 hours for a human to solve. This suggests puzzles requiring significant generation time relative to their difficulty may not qualify for higher tiers.
Update 2025-11-22 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Verification requirement clarification: Solutions must be objectively verifiable. If a puzzle's solution is too subjective to determine correctness (e.g., badly drawn frames that may or may not represent a valid solution), it fails the mass-generatable criteria because the creator cannot mass-evaluate whether solutions are correct.
Update 2025-11-22 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Machine-solvability clarification: A puzzle is considered "solvable by machine" if someone can write a script with the intent to solve the described task. This includes tasks that could be automated through straightforward programming, even if the setup initially restricts humans to manual methods (e.g., typing one letter at a time).
Update 2025-11-23 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Tier ranking clarification for video game constraint puzzles: A puzzle based on playing an existing video game with specific constraints (e.g., completing specific tasks in a playthrough) would be ranked among the lower end of Tier 2 (puzzle generated by simple code). While the video game itself requires significant code to create, since the game already exists, implementing this type of puzzle is considered relatively easy.
Update 2025-11-23 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Mass-generatability time requirement clarification: For a puzzle that takes 10+ hours to solve, the creator expects generation time to be proportional to solving time. If a puzzle takes 10+ hours to solve, generation should not take close to an hour. The creator indicated that a task requiring ~1 hour of generation time for a 10+ hour solving task would not meet the mass-generatability requirements for higher tiers.
Update 2025-11-23 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Mass-generatability evaluation clarification: When evaluating puzzles on the mass-generatability criterion (Requirement #4), the creator will consider both generation time and whether coding is required. A puzzle that doesn't require any coding to generate has advantages even if it falls short on generation time requirements for higher tiers.
Update 2025-11-24 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Physical puzzle clarification: Physical puzzles are only acceptable if they can be solved virtually (e.g., through 3D scanning and simulation). The puzzle must remain solvable by an average 10-year-old even when presented virtually.
Update 2025-11-24 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Puzzle generation clarification: Puzzles that appear to be generated by LLM prompts do not qualify as meeting the mass-generatability requirements, even if they can be quickly generated using an LLM. This applies to puzzles that are clearly the output of prompting an AI system rather than being created through simple human effort or simple code.
Update 2025-11-24 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Video submission clarification: Puzzles can involve submitting a video (filmed or generated) as a solution. However, if AI can generate that video and a human can easily submit it, this counts as solvable by machine and would disqualify the puzzle under Requirement #2.
Update 2025-11-24 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Solvability by 10-year-old requirement: The creator has questioned whether a proposed puzzle (identifying 3 songs combined and slowed/sped up, with cryptic hints) meets the requirement that it be solvable by an average 10-year-old. This reinforces that puzzles must be accessible to children of this age level, not just technically solvable but practically solvable by someone with limited knowledge and experience.
Update 2025-11-25 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Physical constraint clarification: Puzzles where the physical constraint is the main challenge do not qualify. The creator does not intend for physical limitations to be the primary difficulty factor in qualifying puzzles.
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@creator Should “Solvable by even an average 10 years ago.” say “Solvable by even an average 10 year old.”?
https://files.catbox.moe/2y75ds.mp3
This contains 3 songs combined, each slowed down or sped up to make it 6 minutes long.
What are the 3 songs?
Only hints given, one for each song:
Commmunism
@evan permaban
If you solve within 10 hours of this post, you shall receive the prize of 1000 mana. To make it hard, send me the exact youtube links I downloaded these audio files from.
@robert it can involve submitting a video. To the extent that AI can generate that video, and a human can submit it easily, that count as solvable by machine
@Simon74fe part of the task could also be editing the video down to a minute so that it can easily be verified
@Simon74fe hmmmm I don’t intend the physical constrain to be the main constrain here, so I would lean towards not counting this
Here's a 10-minute human-easy AI-hard puzzle that Gemini 3.0 struggled with:
Draw a hand drawn stick figure image of a clinically depressed clown sitting slumped on a chair in a somber, grey waiting room. The clown has sad, running makeup and a speech bubble clearly saying, 'I'M HAVING A GREAT TIME.' Tied to the clown's wrist are exactly four red helium balloons. Facing the clown is a large mirror. In the mirror's reflection, the clown is grinning broadly and giving a thumbs up, the two and a half balloons are fully visible and held in the wrong hand, and the text in the mirror is backwards, but the individual letters are the right way around '.EMIT DAB A GNIVAH M'I'. The room has no windows.
@Lobstertronic looks like a puzzle generated by an LLM prompt.
In anycase, this puzzle takes only 10 minute for a human to solve, and it is not mass generatable.
@AmmonLam yep, multiple iterations with Gemini 3.0 Pro. It's an interesting challenge you've set - trying to get at what's hard for AI, but making the puzzle mass-generatable and human-easy. The problem is "mass-generatable" may play into AI's hand.
I think your solution may come from stacking multiple AI-hard failure modes (e g nuance, a sense of humor, situations not in the training data...).
I'll be watching this market with interest. BTW, why force the poor human to labor for ten hours?
@Lobstertronic "why force the poor human to labor for ten hours?"
You'll see. I'm going to create a puzzle that takes 10+ hours of hard labor to solve, and make a market about whether the puzzle will be solved.
This is blockchain 3.0. In stead of Proof of work by computational power it will be Proof of work by human labor. When AI has automated everything this will be the only remaining venue for human to earn their worth.
@AmmonLam I'd suggest then that for ethical and sustainability reasons the "proof of work" be "proof of beneficial work". If you're going to work hard, then you may as well cure cancer instead of just creating more carbon dioxide.
@Lobstertronic Bitcoin supporters doesn't seem to care whether the computing power used in "proof of work" are used in beneficial means. So there's that.
If one can devise a mechanism where the computational power/man power used in "proof of work" can be directed to simultaneously produce something useful, I think that would be a industry disrupting invention.
@AmmonLam Wait isn't "proof of work that also produces something useful" what most jobs consisted of for all of human history? Like "go pick those potatoes, and put them in this bucket to prove you did it, and then I can pay you for the useful work you did"
@A I'm referring to dual-purpose "proof of work" that also at the same time help validate block chain transactions, instead of only proving that you picked the potatoes.
@A For example, you could take a hard boiled egg, write a message on the shell, then smash it and send the pieces to the puzzle takers. They need to reassemble the egg and find the message. Depending on how thoroughly you smash it you could make the solve time arbitrarily high to your preference.
@A The puzzle has to be solvable virtually (See #1). To the extent that you 3D scanned it and uploaded it to a simulator a human can solve it virtually. But when you smashed it too thoroughly it might come to a point that it's too hard for a 10 years old to solve