ChatGPT-3 got the wrong answer. It merely pattern matched against having seen the river crossing problem before, and simply regurgitated the solution to the unaltered version of the puzzle.
But later versions have been able to one-shot solve the "puzzle".
Here's GPT-5.1 getting the right answer in one shot:
Here's my river crossing puzzle one, from 2023.
https://chatgpt.com/share/691f0bb2-6498-8009-b327-791c14ae81...
ChatGPT-3 got the wrong answer. It merely pattern matched against having seen the river crossing problem before, and simply regurgitated the solution to the unaltered version of the puzzle.
But later versions have been able to one-shot solve the "puzzle".
Here's GPT-5.1 getting the right answer in one shot:
https://chatgpt.com/share/691f0c27-e284-8009-96a9-a17bf37939...