sudoku

ueaj ✓ @_ueaj · 11h This is definitely not what they're doing at the labs but I made a programming language that can only represent circuits a transformer can learn, and then asked fable to create a program which would unroll sudoku solving computations in a CoT and spit out the answer by inference. It's a very strange way of programming and I would have a very hard time doing it myself, the fact Fable can is incredible and superhuman. I think you could probably keep going with this to get theoretically optimal reasoning traces for a wide variety of problems, and SFT it into a model to get a super dense starting position. Though I doubt it's transferability to real tasks, this is mostly just a fun project. Anyways here's a chain of thought from a purely symbolic transformer analog solving a 4x4 sudoku (9x9 below) [embedded image, code/terminal block:] Prompt (this is all it gets — raw characters, no coordinates): grid 4 ; 1 . . . . 4 . . 3 . . . . 2 run ; Emitted CoT, annotated: <think> fixed r1c1 1 ; fixed r2c3 4 ; fixed r3c2 3 ; fixed r4c4 2 ; ← PARSE PHASE (prio 6): the machine reads its own prompt — "the 7th grid char is a 4, and 7 maps to r2c3" — ordinal by prefix-counting, cell by label coincidence. Coordinates derived, not given. elim r1c2 1 ; elim r1c3 1 ; elim r1c4 1 ; ← ELIMINATE (prio 5): clue 1 floods row 1... elim r2c1 1 ; elim r3c1 1 ; elim r4c1 1 ; ← ...column 1... elim r2c2 1 ; ...and box 1 elim r1c3 4 ; ... elim r4c3 4 ; ← clue 4 floods; then 3; then 2 fixed r1c1 2 ; elim r1c1 3 ; elim r1c1 4 ; ← ELIM_SELF: clue cells reject other digits elim r2c3 1 ; ... elim r4c4 4 ; fixed r1c4 3 ; ← FIRST DEDUCTION (naked single, prio 4): r1c4 has lost 1 (row), 2 (col), 4 (box) — count hits 3, the threshold gate fires, 3 remains elim r1c3 3 ; elim r2c4 3 ; ← new fact floods immediately (prio 5 outranks 4) fixed r1c3 2 ; elim r1c2 2 ; ← cascade: every deduction re-arms elimination fixed r1c2 4 ; elim r4c2 4 ; fixed r2c2 2 ; elim r2c1 2 ; fixed r2c1 3 ; fixed r2c4 1 ; elim r3c4 1 ; fixed r3c3 1 ; elim r4c3 1 ; fixed r3c4 4 ; fixed r3c1 2 ; fixed r4c1 4 ; fixed r4c2 1 ; fixed r4c3 3 ; </think> ← fires only when NO rule above can (quiescence detected by priority, not by a check) 1 4 2 3 3 2 4 1 2 3 1 4 4 1 3 2 ← ANSWER: per-cell retrieval from the log, cursor = count of digits emitted since </think> <eos> ← 16 digits counted → halt [quoted tweet below:] ueaj ✓ @_ueaj · Jul 15 Trying to repro those super dense gpt 5.x model reasoning traces is way harder than it seems. IDK if it's just obcene amounts of compute applied to what I'm trying now or if my technique is wrong. Either way OAI cooked