nowfound

AI · March 3, 2026

PP

Pencil Puzzle Bench – LLM Benchmark for Multi-Step Verifiable Reasoning

I've been working on applying LLMs to long-context, verifiable problems over the past year, and today I'm releasing a benchmark of 62,000 pencil puzzles across 94 types (sudoku, nonori, slitherlink, etc.). The benchmark also allows for intermediate checks /rule breaks for all varieties at any step. I tested 51 models against a subset (300 puzzles) in two modes: single-shot (output the full solution) and agentic (iterate with verifier feedback). Some results: - Best model (GPT 5.2@xhigh) solves 56%. (~ half the puzzles are unsolved by any model) - Agentic solves average 29 turns. The…

Pencil Puzzle Bench – LLM Benchmark for Multi-Step Verifiable Reasoning launched on March 3, 2026 with 5 votes, #1,928 of 23,380 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.

Visit ppbench.com ↗Alternativestop 8% of March 2026

What it does

In the maker’s words, at launch

I've been working on applying LLMs to long-context, verifiable problems over the past year, and today I'm releasing a benchmark of 62,000 pencil puzzles across 94 types (sudoku, nonori, slitherlink, etc.). The benchmark also allows for intermediate checks /rule breaks for all varieties at any step. I tested 51…

Does a similar job

all alternatives →
  • LocalScore – Local LLM Benchmark2025 · localscore.ai · ▲124

    Hey Folks! I've been building an open source benchmark for measuring local LLM performance on your own hardware. The benchmarking tool is a CLI written on top of Llamafile to allow for portability across different hardware setups and operating systems. The website is a database of results from the benchmark, allowing you to explore the performance of different models and hardware configurations. Please give it a try! Any feedback and contribution is much appreciated. I'd love for this to serve as a helpful resource for the local AI community. For more check out: - Website:…

  • AT
    A tool to benchmark LLM APIs (OpenAI, Claude, local/self-hosted)2025 · llmapitest.com · ▲55

    I recently built a small open-source tool to benchmark different LLM API endpoints — including OpenAI, Claude, and self-hosted models (like llama.cpp). It runs a configurable number of test requests and reports two key metrics: • First-token latency (ms): How long it takes for the first token to appear • Output speed (tokens/sec): Overall output fluency Demo: https://llmapitest.com/ Code: https://github.com/qjr87/llm-api-test The goal is to provide a simple, visual, and reproducible way to evaluate performance across different LLM providers, including…

  • LLM Verified with Monte Carlo Tree Search2023 · github.com · ▲102

    This is a weekend hack that I'd like to further develop as it's working surprisingly well. Using MCTS, we can explore a space of possible verified programs with an LLM. We check the partial programs at each step, and so steer towards programs that pass the verifier. https://github.com/namin/llm-verified-with-monte-carlo-tree-...

  • Watch LLMs play 21,000 hands of PokerJan 2026 · pokerbench.adfontes.io · ▲36

    PokerBench is my attempt at a new LLM benchmark wherein frontier models play Texas Hold'em in an arena setting. It also features a simulator to view individual games and observe how the different models reason about poker strategy. Opus/Haiku, Gemini Pro/Flash, GPT-5.2/5 mini, and Grok 4.1 Fast Reasoning have all been included. All code -> https://github.com/JoeAzar/pokerbench

  • finetune LLMs via the Finetuning Hub2023 · github.com · ▲80

    Hi HN community, I have been working on benchmarking publicly available LLMs these past couple of weeks. More precisely, I am interested on the finetuning piece since a lot of businesses are starting to entertain the idea of self-hosting LLMs trained on their proprietary data rather than relying on third party APIs. To this point, I am tracking the following 4 pillars of evaluation that businesses are typically look into: - Performance - Time to train an LLM - Cost to train an LLM - Inference (throughput / latency / cost per token) For each LLM, my aim is to benchmark them for…

  • Cheddar-bench – unsupervised benchmark for coding agentsFeb 2026 · github.com · ▲9

    I built a small benchmark to test CLI coding agents on blind bug detection. A challenger agent injects bugs and writes ground truth (`bugs.json`). A different reviewer agent audits the repo without seeing ground truth, and an LLM matcher scores bug-to-finding assignments. Current run: 50 repos, 150 challenges, 450 reviews, 2,603 injected bugs. Weighted detection: Claude 58.05%, Codex 37.84%, Gemini 27.81%. LLM-judge benchmarks are easy to get wrong, so I’d really appreciate critical feedback on benchmark fairness, scoring/matching methodology, and obvious failure modes I’m missing. Full…

More ai this month

the category →
  • Video model that turns script into viral social media videos

    AI · 18d ago · spira.ai

  • The browser where Claude Code and Codex work beside you

    AI · 18d ago · rill.love

  • Kolibri is Aleph Alpha

    AI · 19d ago · tej.as

  • Paintings by AI models: programs run through a simulation of oil paint.

    AI · 21d ago · stillwet.art

  • A real-time world model you can explore and change

    AI · 29d ago · world.pixverse.video

  • Beam.win▲377

    Run AI agents on one Mac and use its windows on another

    AI · 4d ago · beam.win

Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part

Launched alongside, March 2026

the whole month →
  • AI-native CRM that builds itself and does work for you

    AI · Mar 2026 · lightfield.app

  • Tobira.ai▲728

    A network where AI agents find deals for their humans

    AI · Mar 2026 · tobira.ai

  • Switch from ChatGPT to Claude with import memory feature

    AI · Mar 2026 · claude.com

  • Littlebird remembers everything across your meetings, messages, docs, and apps, then takes action so you can recall any detail and never lose context.

    AI · Mar 2026 · littlebird.ai

  • Your AI Coworker that proactively executes tasks

    AI · Mar 2026 · viktor.com

  • Jupid▲659

    File your taxes with Claude Code

    Commerce · Mar 2026 · jupid.com