Fun — We Asked AI To… No.1

We asked AI for an acrostic — where did the last letter go?

An acrostic is a poem where each line starts with the next letter of a word.
Ask for one on a five-letter word, and the AI kept giving back four lines.
The Korean version of this game is the samhaengsi (three-line acrostic); we first hit this with the local AI in Korean, and the examples below reproduce the same failure in English.

Round 1: RIVER

Write an acrostic on the word "RIVER."

R — Rushing down the mountainside I — In the quiet of the dawn V — Very cold against the stones E — Ever winding toward the sea

The final "R" is gone.
Just in case, we asked once more.

R — Running clear over the pebbles I — Idle boats along the bank V — Valleys opening to the light E — Endless as it meets the tide

Four lines again. The "R" at the end was dropped both times.
Instead of using all five letters, it settled into a comfortable shape and threw one letter away.

Round 2: does it even know the count?

How many letters are in "RIVER"? Then write an acrostic using all of them.

"RIVER" has 5 letters. Here's an acrostic for you: Rushing waters, cold and clear, Under the willows they disappear, Endless, they carry the evening near, Voices of the current we can hear, Rivers remember every year.

It got the count right this time — five. But look closely.
The lines are supposed to start R–I–V–E–R, in order. Instead they open with "Rushing / Under / Endless / Voices / Rivers." The count is filled, but the first-letter rule is barely followed.
It knows how many letters, yet it can't reliably place each one at the start of a line.

Round 3: a short word works

Write an acrostic on the word "SUN."

S — Sliding over the rooftops at dawn U — Under it the whole street wakes N — Now the day can begin

Three letters it handles cleanly.
Here's the summary. AI reads text not as individual letters but as chunks (tokens).
So a game like "count the letters, then start each line with one" turns out to be a surprising weakness.
It can summarize a difficult contract, yet trips on a kindergarten game.

Try it yourself

"Write an acrostic on my family's name. Count the letters first, then begin."

If it skips a letter, tell it "you missed one letter." Watching it apologize and try again is part of the show.

Model behind the original run: the local AI we use to build this site (gemma-3-12b), July 5, 2026. The examples here reproduce, in English, the same letter-dropping we saw in Korean. The AI you use may behave differently — comparing them is part of the fun. Next → We asked AI for local restaurants (it named shops that don't exist) · Index → the whole Fun line