I got some unsolicited assistance when creating a puzzle

23 Aug, 2024

A while ago, when I created the A-M puzzle, I started typing it in my VS Code editor.

I have GitHub Copilot turned off for Markdown files, but I suppose VS Code didn't detect that I was writing Markdown when I started.

So it autosuggested the whole question using my prompt (in the dark black text):

How distressing is it that Copilot can generate something that looks like a quiz question, without any of the romance of one?

It's worse than an absence of romance. There are no clues or connections between things, just a string of facts. Completely unsolvable for a human, not that Copilot would know.

Copilot just found a pattern - actor's name, character's name, movie's name, Oscar winner in {insert year here}. And beat it to death. Over and over and over again. Bashed that pattern's head in. Repeatedly. Into a mushy, formless pulp. Completely destroyed and obliterated it. Without any awareness that it'd gone on for too long.

There's even two As and two Bs! That's bad form. It's disgraceful and an absolute outrage. Any even vaguely sentient entity knows that, past Z, you have only three options:

Do what Excel does and go to AA, AB, and so on.
Be classy and switch to using Greek letters¹.
Have some self-respect and stop yourself right there. 26 is plenty.

That last part is the creepiest. The phantom postscript tells you straight away that Copilot ripped it off, badly, from poor folks at Puzzling Stack Exchange, who I'm sure would have created better puzzles than this monstrosity. Not to mention the cut-off "Accept all cookies" text at the very bottom? That sends absolute shivers down my spine.

I'm cool with AI assistants for writing code, which has well-defined patterns and examples. It's pretty useful, if quite silly at times.

For creative stuff? Count me out. I'll write my own words, thank you very much.

Footnote: It also got the answers to D and E completely wrong. Copilot would be a bad quizzer.

Sub-option 2a: Even classier is to write the whole puzzle using Greek letters. Of course, this knocks you down from 26 letters to 24. But you do get to use both lowercase ( $α, β, γ, \dots, ψ, ω$ ) and uppercase letters ( $A, B, Γ, \dots, Ψ, Ω$ ), so it works out.↩