> This is a trivial question. There's one correct answer and the reasoning to get there takes one step: the car needs to be at the car wash, so you drive.

I don’t think it’s that easy. An intelligent mind will wonder why the question is being asked, whether they misunderstood the question, or whether the asker misspoke, or some other missing context. So the correct answer is neither “walk” nor “drive”, but “Wat?” or “I’m not sure I understand the question, can you rephrase?”, or “Is the vehicle you would drive the same as the car that you want to wash?”, or “Where is your car currently located?”, and so on.

The reason that those questions are asked, though, is that the answer to the actual question is obvious, so a human will start to wonder if it's some kind of trick.

Yep, just a little more context and all/most of the models would do much better. And sure, most average+ intelligence adults whose first language is English (probably) don't need this, but they're not the target audience for the instructions :)

"The 'car wash' is a building I need to drive through."

or

"The 'car wash' is a bottle of cleaning fluid that I left at the end of my driveway."

https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/Rain-x-Foaming-Car-Wash-Con...

I think most people would say "drive?" and wonder when the punchline is coming, but (IMO) I don't think they'd start asking for clarification right away.

I agree. If the LLM were truly an intelligence, it would be able to ask about this nonsense question. It would be able to ask "Why is walking even an option? Can you please explain how you imagine that would work? Do you mean hand-washing the car at home, instead?" (etc, etc)

Real people can ask for clarification when things are ambiguous or confusing. Once something is clarified, they can work that into their understanding of how someone communicates about a given topic. An LLM can't.

That's a fair point, but if you would see it as a riddle, which I don't really think it is, and you had to answer either or, I'd still assume it's most logical to chose drive isn't it?

Same energy: https://youtu.be/8ERyTfm1Dxw

Agreed. It's also possible that "car wash" merely refers to soap they might use to do it themselves, and they're only going to buy it and then wash the car themselves at home. Imagine the same question but substitute "wash" for "wax" and it makes even more sense IMO.