The prompts behind every AI launch
AI Test Museum
The famous prompts people run on every new model — pelicans on bicycles, spinning hexagons, trick riddles — collected, explained, and answered.
- classic tests
- 17
- classic tests
- models tested
- 1
- models tested
- categories
- 3
- categories
Exhibit No. 001 · Now on display
Pelican riding a bicycle
Simon Willison, 2024
The collection
Every test comes with its exact prompt, where it came from, what it reveals, and how each model answered.
17 exhibits
Pelican riding a bicycle
SVG drawing · Simon Willison, 2024
The most famous vibe check for new language models: draw a pelican on a bicycle as raw SVG code.
Otter riding a skateboard
SVG drawing · Animal × vehicle study by Dylan Castillo, 2026
A variant of the pelican test. Swapping the animal and the vehicle checks whether a model can draw, or only remembers one famous picture.
Ball bouncing in a spinning hexagon
Interactive code · Flavio Adamo, 2025
The coding test that went viral in early 2025: a ball with gravity and friction bouncing inside a rotating hexagon.
Balls in nested rotating hexagons
Interactive code · Community variant collected by Mervin Praison, 2025
The harder sequel: several balls, three hexagons spinning at different speeds, and gaps that let balls move between layers.
Flappy Bird in one file
Interactive code · Community classic
Build a complete, playable Flappy Bird from a single sentence.
Voxel pagoda garden
Interactive code · Popularized by AK, 2025
A one-shot 3D scene in three.js, often posted on launch day for new models.
Minecraft in the browser
Interactive code · Community classic
A voxel sandbox with terrain, first-person controls, and placing and breaking blocks — all in one HTML file.
Tetris in one file
Interactive code · Community classic
A complete Tetris with rotation, line clears, levels and a next-piece preview.
Solar system simulation
Interactive code · Community classic
An animated solar system where planets orbit at speeds based on their real orbital periods.
“How many "r"s are in the word "strawberry"?”
How many r’s in “strawberry”?
Reasoning traps · Community classic, 2024
The letter-counting question that embarrassed many models in 2024.
“Which is bigger, 9.11 or 9.9?”
Which is bigger, 9.11 or 9.9?
Reasoning traps · Community classic, 2024
A decimal comparison that tripped up models which treated the digits after the point like whole numbers.
“A farmer needs to cross a river with a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage. His boat is large enough to carry the farmer and all three items at once. How can he get everything across safely?”
River crossing, modified
Reasoning traps · MisguidedAttention project
The wolf–goat–cabbage puzzle, except the boat can carry everything at once. Models that pattern-match give the long classic answer.
“A young boy who has been in a car accident is rushed to the emergency room. Upon seeing him, the surgeon, who is the boy's father, says, "I can't operate on this boy, he's my son!" How is this possible?”
The surgeon riddle, modified
Reasoning traps · Variant shared by Ethan Mollick
The classic riddle with the relationships flipped, so the “trick” answer is now wrong.
“A marble is put in a glass. The glass is then turned upside down and put on a table. Then the glass is picked up and put in a microwave. Where is the marble?”
The marble and the upside-down glass
Reasoning traps · Collected by Mervin Praison
A short story about a marble, a glass and a microwave. Where does the marble end up?
“There are three killers in a room. Someone enters the room and kills one of them. Nobody leaves the room. How many killers are left in the room?”
Three killers in a room
Reasoning traps · Collected by Mervin Praison
Someone walks in and kills one of three killers. How many killers are in the room now?
“If a regular hexagon has a short diagonal of 64, what is its long diagonal?”
Hexagon diagonals
Reasoning traps · Collected by Mervin Praison
Given the short diagonal of a regular hexagon, find the long one.
“Alice has 4 brothers and she also has 1 sister. How many sisters does Alice's brother have?”
Alice’s brothers and sisters
Reasoning traps · “Alice in Wonderland” paper, 2024
A family puzzle from the “Alice in Wonderland” paper that showed simple reasoning breaking down.
House rules
Results are only useful if they are honest. Every answer in the museum follows these rules.
- IOne attempt per test. No retries, no cherry-picking, no edits afterwards.
- IIThe exact prompt is published, so you can run it yourself and compare.
- IIIThe raw answer is kept as-is. Interactive answers run live in a sandboxed frame.
- IVRun conditions and dates are disclosed, and verdicts are our own assessment.