Probing Large Language Models in Reasoning and Translating Complex Linguistic Puzzles

This paper investigates the utilization of Large Language Models (LLMs) for solving complex linguistic puzzles, a domain requiring advanced reasoning and adept translation capabilities akin to human cognitive processes. We explore specific prompting techniques designed to enhance ability of LLMs to reason and elucidate their decision-making pathways, with a focus on Input-Output Prompting (IO), Chain-of-Thought Prompting (CoT), and Solo Performance Prompting (SPP). Utilizing datasets from the Puzzling Machine Competition and various Linguistics Olympiads, we employ a comprehensive set of metrics to assess the performance of GPT-4 0603, a prominent LLM, across these prompting methods. Our findings illuminate the potential of LLMs in linguistic reasoning and complex translation tasks, highlighting their capabilities and identifying limitations in the context of linguistic puzzles. This research contributes significantly to the broader field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) by providing insights into the optimization of LLM applications for improved reasoning and translation accuracy, thereby enriching the ongoing dialogue in NLP advancements.

Reasoning Over the Glyphs: Evaluation of LLM's Decipherment of Rare Scripts

We explore the capabilities of LVLMs and LLMs in deciphering rare scripts not encoded in Unicode. We introduce a novel approach to construct a multimodal dataset of linguistic puzzles involving such scripts, utilizing a tokenization method for language glyphs. Our methods include the Picture Method for LVLMs and the Description Method for LLMs, enabling these models to tackle these challenges. We conduct experiments using prominent models, GPT-4o, Gemini, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, on linguistic puzzles. Our findings reveal the strengths and limitations of current AI methods in linguistic decipherment, highlighting the impact of Unicode encoding on model performance and the challenges of modeling visual language tokens through descriptions. Our study advances understanding of AI's potential in linguistic decipherment and underscores the need for further research.