Can LLMs Generate and Solve Linguistic Olympiad Puzzles?

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Majmudar, Neh, Filatova, Elena
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Majmudar, Neh
Filatova, Elena
author_facet Majmudar, Neh
Filatova, Elena
contents In this paper, we introduce a combination of novel and exciting tasks: the solution and generation of linguistic puzzles. We focus on puzzles used in Linguistic Olympiads for high school students. We first extend the existing benchmark for the task of solving linguistic puzzles. We explore the use of Large Language Models (LLMs), including recent state-of-the-art models such as OpenAI's o1, for solving linguistic puzzles, analyzing their performance across various linguistic topics. We demonstrate that LLMs outperform humans on most puzzles types, except for those centered on writing systems, and for the understudied languages. We use the insights from puzzle-solving experiments to direct the novel task of puzzle generation. We believe that automating puzzle generation, even for relatively simple puzzles, holds promise for expanding interest in linguistics and introducing the field to a broader audience. This finding highlights the importance of linguistic puzzle generation as a research task: such puzzles can not only promote linguistics but also support the dissemination of knowledge about rare and understudied languages.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_21820
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Can LLMs Generate and Solve Linguistic Olympiad Puzzles?
Majmudar, Neh
Filatova, Elena
Computation and Language
In this paper, we introduce a combination of novel and exciting tasks: the solution and generation of linguistic puzzles. We focus on puzzles used in Linguistic Olympiads for high school students. We first extend the existing benchmark for the task of solving linguistic puzzles. We explore the use of Large Language Models (LLMs), including recent state-of-the-art models such as OpenAI's o1, for solving linguistic puzzles, analyzing their performance across various linguistic topics. We demonstrate that LLMs outperform humans on most puzzles types, except for those centered on writing systems, and for the understudied languages. We use the insights from puzzle-solving experiments to direct the novel task of puzzle generation. We believe that automating puzzle generation, even for relatively simple puzzles, holds promise for expanding interest in linguistics and introducing the field to a broader audience. This finding highlights the importance of linguistic puzzle generation as a research task: such puzzles can not only promote linguistics but also support the dissemination of knowledge about rare and understudied languages.
title Can LLMs Generate and Solve Linguistic Olympiad Puzzles?
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21820