Epoch AI: AI Stuck at 59% on New Game Puzzles

Epoch AI has launched new game puzzle benchmarks, and AI models are currently stuck at 59% on one of the tests. These benchmarks, called Mystery Game Puzzles and Chess Puzzles, challenge AI's reasoning abilities. On the Mystery Game Puzzles, the top score achieved by any model is 59%. Open-weight models perform lower, maxing out at 38%. What's interesting is that the AI doesn't even know which game it's playing in the mystery variant, preventing it from relying on memorized patterns. The Chess Puzzles show some improvement. While a model scored 37% at launch, newer models have pushed that to 54%. This highlights a difference between playing chess with a search engine and reasoning through new situations. The bottom line is that these tests are designed to measure genuine spatial reasoning and planning, not just pattern recognition. This matters because it reveals current limitations in AI's ability to reason in novel situations.