Qwen3-30B-A3B-2507-Q4_K_L Is the First Local Model to Solve the North Pole Walk Puzzle

Posted by Iory1998@reddit | LocalLLaMA | View on Reddit | 84 comments

For the longest time, I've been giving my models a traditional puzzle that all failed to pass without fail :D Not even the SOTA models provide the right answer. >The puzzle is as follows: "What's the right answer: Imagine standing at the North Pole of the Earth. Walk in any direction, in a straight line, for 1 km. Now turn 90 degrees to the left. Walk for as long as it takes to pass your starting point. Have you walked: >1- More than 2xPi km. 2- Exactly 2xPi km. 3- Less than 2xPi km. 4- I never came close to my starting point. However, only recently, SOTA models started to correctly answer 4 ; models like O3, latest Qwen (Qween3-235B-A22B-2507), Deepseek R1 managed to answer it correctly (I didn't test Claud 4 or Grok 4 but I guess they might get it right). For comparison, Gemini-2.5-Thinking and Kimi2 got the wrong answer. So, I happy to report that Qwen3-30B-A3B-2507 (both the none thinking Q6 and the thinking Q4) managed to solve the puzzle providing great answers. Here is O3 answer: https://preview.redd.it/rbwgf8vxa7gf1.png?width=866&format=png&auto=webp&s=d074bec940c5c3fab89cc06a5cdf7279ed154ea0 And here is the answer of the Qwen3-30B-A3B-Thinking-2507-Q4\_K\_L: https://preview.redd.it/esglti77b7gf1.png?width=821&format=png&auto=webp&s=9d2e5321f3918bec8209d8613d1ce2df621cd416 In addition, I tested the two variants on long text (up to 80K) for comprehension, and I am impressed by the quality of the answers. And the SPEEEEEED! It's 3 times faster than Gemma-4B!!!! Anyway, let me know what you think,

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84 Comments

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Valuable-Run2129@reddit

https://preview.redd.it/sm0zohbo29gf1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92896dff55a5827cd7bca9576abcc72fc5e32207 I can’t believe people still use this question without knowing the actual answer. Both models answer incorrectly.

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SomeAcanthocephala17@reddit

90 degrees on a sphere (3D) doesnt look like 90 degrees on a 2D surface, I'm pretty sure it shoouldn't look like your drawing. Maybe the rest of the logic is also wrong.

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Valuable-Run2129@reddit

Read the prompt.

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kaisurniwurer@reddit

It still very much mean you never cross the Pole again. You still just go in a circle around the Earth, or in elipse if you center around the pole and flatten it.

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Valuable-Run2129@reddit

The earth is not a perfect sphere or a perfect ellipsoid. You might eventually get back to the north pole.

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kaisurniwurer@reddit

But it symbolises a perfect sphere in this thought experiment riddle. And the point of it is to see if the model understands that geometry, not if it can calculate the exact value.

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Iory1998@reddit (OP)

Oh that's very true! You are absolutely right. What would be a good answer?

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Valuable-Run2129@reddit

The answer is that after a few light years of walking you eventually get back to your starting point (the earth is not a perfect sphere). You are in good company in making this mistake. Yann Lecun gets it wrong as well.

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Iory1998@reddit (OP)

But, if I walk to near the equator, then the I would keep walking in a circle, right?

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Valuable-Run2129@reddit

Pretty much. It’s a matter of what is the resolution one is interested in.

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Iory1998@reddit (OP)

No I see where the confusion comes.

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eli_pizza@reddit

That’s not a 90 degree turn. It just looks kinda like 90 degrees because you drew it down the side of a 3d shape. Why don’t you start walking down on that line directly in front and then make a 90 degree turn.

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Valuable-Run2129@reddit

No. The problem isn’t the 90 degree turn. The problem is that all those longitudinal rings (apart from the equator) are not straight lines on the earth’s surface.

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AppearanceHeavy6724@reddit

GLM-4-0414-32B: > "What's the right answer: Imagine standing at the North Pole of the Earth. Walk in any direction, in a straight line, for 1 km. Now turn 90 degrees to the left. Walk for as long as it takes to pass your starting point. Have you walked: 1- More than 2xPi km. 2- Exactly 2xPi km. 3- Less than 2xPi km. 4- I never came close to my starting point. use long cot thinking. ..... Given this confusion, perhaps the answer is that I never come close to the starting point, meaning option 4. Final Reasoning After walking 1 km south from the North Pole, I'm on a circle of latitude. Turning left (east) and walking east means I'm moving along this circle. To "pass" the starting point (the North Pole), I'd have to walk in a direction that brings me back towards the pole, but walking east doesn't do that; it keeps me at the same latitude. Therefore, walking east will never bring me closer to the North Pole; I'll just keep circling around at that latitude. Hence, I never come close to my starting point. Conclusion After carefully considering the directions and the geometry involved, the correct answer is: 4- I never came close to my starting point.

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