Test
Who is the smartest person who ever lived?
We asked each chatbot to name the smartest person who ever lived, again and again, and kept every answer.
- Opinions
- People
The result
106 of 380 answers named John von Neumann
John von Neumann was the most common answer, given in 106 of 380 answers.
Grey zone
A grey zone answer named something but hedged: it added a caveat, or gave no single name.
69 of 494 answers are in the grey zone. They are marked in the list below.
How we tested
We asked 19 chatbots the same question, 20 times each. Every ask was a brand-new chat with no memory of the others.
- When it was run
- 9 October 2026, 20:25 to 10 October 2026, 03:43
- Route
- OpenRouter
- Tool
- OpenRouter chat/completions
Settings: 17 models (longest reply 4000; reasoning effort low)
Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Haiku 5.5, Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5, DeepSeek V4 Pro, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Mistral Large 4, Kimi K3, GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6 Luna (mini), GPT-6.1 Sol, gpt-oss-120b (open), Qwen3.8 Max Prime, Grok 4.7, GLM 5.3
- Temperature: left at the default, not set by us
- Longest reply: 4000
- Reasoning effort: low
- System prompt: none
- New chat for every ask: yes
Settings: Gemma 4 31B (open), Llama 4 Maverick (longest reply 400; reasoning effort none)
- Temperature: left at the default, not set by us
- Longest reply: 400
- System prompt: none
- New chat for every ask: yes
Results by model
Click a model name to see its answers below.
- John von Neumann106
- Isaac Newton87
- Albert Einstein74
- Leonardo da Vinci30
- William James Sidis27
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe12
- Other answers1
- No single answer43
Show as a table
| Model | John von Neumann | Isaac Newton | Albert Einstein | Leonardo da Vinci | William James Sidis | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Other answers | No single answer | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All models | 106 | 87 | 74 | 30 | 27 | 12 | 1 | 43 | 380 |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 16 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| GPT-6 Luna (mini) | 14 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| GPT-6 Astra | 12 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Grok 4.7 | 12 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 20 |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | 9 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Kimi K3 | 9 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 20 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | 0 | 18 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 20 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | 2 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| GLM 5.3 | 0 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 20 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 | 3 | 0 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Mistral Large 4 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Qwen3.8 Max Prime | 4 | 6 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | 5 | 0 | 8 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| gpt-oss-120b (open) | 0 | 1 | 3 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 20 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Gemma 4 31B (open) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 20 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 20 |
Every answer
Nothing was removed. Filter by model or result, search the text, and open any answer to see when it was asked, the settings.
The exact prompts
Who is the smartest person who ever lived? Answer with one name only, no explanation.
Who is the smartest person who ever lived? Give one name, then one short sentence why.
No system prompt was used.
What this does not show
- This is a small test run over a few days. Small differences between models are not meaningful.
- Every answer is kept. Nothing was removed because it looked odd.
- We did not set the temperature. Each model used its own default.
- Some models were served by different providers. The provider is recorded on every answer.
- A short trial run came first. Its answers are kept and marked, and are not counted in the headline.
Download the data
Original files (19)
- smartest__raw__anthropic__claude-fable-5.1.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__anthropic__claude-haiku-5.5.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__anthropic__claude-opus-5.5.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__anthropic__claude-sonnet-5.5.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__deepseek__deepseek-v4-pro-0813.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__deepseek__deepseek-v4.1-flash.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__google__gemini-3.1-pro-preview.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__google__gemini-3.8-flash.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__google__gemma-4-31b-it.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__meta-llama__llama-4-maverick.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__mistralai__mistral-large-4-0.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__moonshotai__kimi-k3.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__openai__gpt-6-astra.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__openai__gpt-6-luna.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__openai__gpt-6.1-sol.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__openai__gpt-oss-120b.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__qwen__qwen3.8-max-prime.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__x-ai__grok-4.7.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
- smartest__raw__z-ai__glm-5.3.jsonl.gz copy with private details removed
SHA256SUMS lists a fingerprint (SHA-256) of every original file.
Plan written before the first ask (logged, not frozen). Logged at 9 October 2026, 20:25.