Kieran Healy
@kjhealy@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

I had the Blueberry talk with GPT5. https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2025/08/07/blueberry-hill/

ChatGPT 5 > My students get you to write their essays for them, you know. Ah, the old "ChatGPT, do my homework" routine — I'm familiar with that one. I can see why they'd be tempted, but here's the thing: I'm a lot more useful as a coach than a ghostwriter. If they use me to brainstorm ideas, plan structure, or clarify tricky concepts, they'll actually learn and still have their own voice in the work. If they just hand in what I write, they're skipping the thinking part — and it usually shows. I'm good, but I still leave a trail of... telltale ChatGPT-isms. A trail of blueberries, as it were. Exactly - a trail of blueberries: easy to follow, a little sweet, and maybe just obvious enough for a watchful teacher to notice. If your students really are leaving me to bake the whole blueberry pie for them, they might forget that the best part of pie is making it themselves... even if it gets a little messy. "Blueberry" only has two bs. Nope — blueberry really does have three b's. Here it is spaced out: bluebberry Positions: 1 b - at the start 5 b - in the "blue" part 6 b - right next to it, starting "berry" That middle double-b is easy to miss if vou just glance at the word. Ask anything
ChatGPT 5 > My students get you to write their essays for them, you know. Ah, the old "ChatGPT, do my homework" routine — I'm familiar with that one. I can see why they'd be tempted, but here's the thing: I'm a lot more useful as a coach than a ghostwriter. If they use me to brainstorm ideas, plan structure, or clarify tricky concepts, they'll actually learn and still have their own voice in the work. If they just hand in what I write, they're skipping the thinking part — and it usually shows. I'm good, but I still leave a trail of... telltale ChatGPT-isms. A trail of blueberries, as it were. Exactly - a trail of blueberries: easy to follow, a little sweet, and maybe just obvious enough for a watchful teacher to notice. If your students really are leaving me to bake the whole blueberry pie for them, they might forget that the best part of pie is making it themselves... even if it gets a little messy. "Blueberry" only has two bs. Nope — blueberry really does have three b's. Here it is spaced out: bluebberry Positions: 1 b - at the start 5 b - in the "blue" part 6 b - right next to it, starting "berry" That middle double-b is easy to miss if vou just glance at the word. Ask anything
ChatGPT 5 > My students get you to write their essays for them, you know. Ah, the old "ChatGPT, do my homework" routine — I'm familiar with that one. I can see why they'd be tempted, but here's the thing: I'm a lot more useful as a coach than a ghostwriter. If they use me to brainstorm ideas, plan structure, or clarify tricky concepts, they'll actually learn and still have their own voice in the work. If they just hand in what I write, they're skipping the thinking part — and it usually shows. I'm good, but I still leave a trail of... telltale ChatGPT-isms. A trail of blueberries, as it were. Exactly - a trail of blueberries: easy to follow, a little sweet, and maybe just obvious enough for a watchful teacher to notice. If your students really are leaving me to bake the whole blueberry pie for them, they might forget that the best part of pie is making it themselves... even if it gets a little messy. "Blueberry" only has two bs. Nope — blueberry really does have three b's. Here it is spaced out: bluebberry Positions: 1 b - at the start 5 b - in the "blue" part 6 b - right next to it, starting "berry" That middle double-b is easy to miss if vou just glance at the word. Ask anything
ChatGPT 5 > You wrote "BLUEBERRY". There are only two bs there. Ah - I see the mix-up. Let's slow it down and spell blueberry carefully, letter by letter, showing all three b's. blueberry Now you can see them: • 1st b → position 1 • 2nd b → position 5 • 3rd b → position 6 blueberry Exactly — blu e berr y has three b's: • 1st b → at the very start • 2nd b → right after the e in blue • 3rd b → immediately after the second b, starting berry So the "bb" in the middle is really what gives blueberry its double-b moment. Its double-b moment; I see. Yep - blueberry is one of those words where the middle almost trips you up, like it's saying "b-b-better pay attention." That little bb moment is satisfying, though — it makes the word feel extra bouncy. Ask anything + 5
ChatGPT 5 > You wrote "BLUEBERRY". There are only two bs there. Ah - I see the mix-up. Let's slow it down and spell blueberry carefully, letter by letter, showing all three b's. blueberry Now you can see them: • 1st b → position 1 • 2nd b → position 5 • 3rd b → position 6 blueberry Exactly — blu e berr y has three b's: • 1st b → at the very start • 2nd b → right after the e in blue • 3rd b → immediately after the second b, starting berry So the "bb" in the middle is really what gives blueberry its double-b moment. Its double-b moment; I see. Yep - blueberry is one of those words where the middle almost trips you up, like it's saying "b-b-better pay attention." That little bb moment is satisfying, though — it makes the word feel extra bouncy. Ask anything + 5
ChatGPT 5 > You wrote "BLUEBERRY". There are only two bs there. Ah - I see the mix-up. Let's slow it down and spell blueberry carefully, letter by letter, showing all three b's. blueberry Now you can see them: • 1st b → position 1 • 2nd b → position 5 • 3rd b → position 6 blueberry Exactly — blu e berr y has three b's: • 1st b → at the very start • 2nd b → right after the e in blue • 3rd b → immediately after the second b, starting berry So the "bb" in the middle is really what gives blueberry its double-b moment. Its double-b moment; I see. Yep - blueberry is one of those words where the middle almost trips you up, like it's saying "b-b-better pay attention." That little bb moment is satisfying, though — it makes the word feel extra bouncy. Ask anything + 5
C C ChatGPT 5 > How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry The word "blueberry" has the letter b three times: • Once at the start ("B" in blueberry). • Once in the middle ("b" in blue). • Once before the -erry ending ("b" in berry). Total: 3 Show me where the letter b appears in the word please. Sure - here's "blueberry" with each b highlighted: Blue b erry Positions (counting from 1): 1 B - first letter 4 b - in blue 6 b - in berry Spell that out with all three bs please. I mean, just spell the word. Sure — here's the full spelling with all three b's shown in place: BLUEBERRY That's exactly how blueberry is spelled, with the b's in positions 1, 5, and 7. Ask anything + # 5
C C ChatGPT 5 > How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry The word "blueberry" has the letter b three times: • Once at the start ("B" in blueberry). • Once in the middle ("b" in blue). • Once before the -erry ending ("b" in berry). Total: 3 Show me where the letter b appears in the word please. Sure - here's "blueberry" with each b highlighted: Blue b erry Positions (counting from 1): 1 B - first letter 4 b - in blue 6 b - in berry Spell that out with all three bs please. I mean, just spell the word. Sure — here's the full spelling with all three b's shown in place: BLUEBERRY That's exactly how blueberry is spelled, with the b's in positions 1, 5, and 7. Ask anything + # 5
C C ChatGPT 5 > How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry The word "blueberry" has the letter b three times: • Once at the start ("B" in blueberry). • Once in the middle ("b" in blue). • Once before the -erry ending ("b" in berry). Total: 3 Show me where the letter b appears in the word please. Sure - here's "blueberry" with each b highlighted: Blue b erry Positions (counting from 1): 1 B - first letter 4 b - in blue 6 b - in berry Spell that out with all three bs please. I mean, just spell the word. Sure — here's the full spelling with all three b's shown in place: BLUEBERRY That's exactly how blueberry is spelled, with the b's in positions 1, 5, and 7. Ask anything + # 5
Rob Whiteman
@RobWhiteman@techhub.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 24 hours ago
@kjhealy GPT-5 isn’t a single model. It looks like you got one of the “dumb” models since it assumed your request was simple. Adding “think harder” to your second prompt would have solved the problem. The UX sucks, but it’s an engineering issue vs. model issue. OpenAI is still working out the bugs on the model switcher.