alt Hacker NewsDoes this answer the question?
Opus 4.6 got the cross and started to get several pieces on the correct faces. It couldn't reason past this. You can see the prompts and all the turn messages.
https://gist.github.com/adam-s/b343a6077dd2f647020ccacea4140...
edit: I can't reply to message below. The point isn't can we solve a Rubik's Cube with a python script and tool calls. The point is can we get an LLM to reason about moving things in 3 dimensions. The prompt is a puzzle in the way that a Rubik's Cube is a puzzle. A 7 year old child can learn 6 moves and figure out how to solve a Rubik's Cube in a weekend, the LLM can't solve it. However, can, given the correct prompt, a LLM solve it? The prompt is the puzzle. That is why it is fun and interesting. Plus, it is a spatial problem so if we solve that we solve a massive class of problems including huge swathes of mathematics the LLMs can't touch yet.
I wonder if the difficulties LLMs have with “seeing” complex detail in images is muddying the problem here. What if you hand it the cube state in text form? (You could try ascii art if you want a middle ground.)
If you want to isolate the issue, try getting the LLM itself to turn the images into a text representation of the cube state and check for accuracy. If it can’t see state correctly it certainly won’t be able to solve.