When I saw a screenshot of GPT 5.2’s answer to the question “How many ‘r’s in garlic?” I thought it was a joke…
…until I tried it out for myself, and it turned out to be true!
At the time of writing (2:24 p.m. UTC-4, Friday, December 12, 2025), if you ask ChatGPT “How many ‘r’s in garlic?” using GPT 5.2 in “auto” mode, you’ll get this response:
There are 0 “r”s in “garlic”.
(The screenshot above is my own, taken from my computer.)
I decided to try the original “strawberry” question that ChatGPT famously got wrong last year…
…but this time, it responded with the correct answer. I suspect the correct answer to the infamous “strawberry” question is the result of fine-tuning aimed specifically at that question.
For more, check out my latest YouTube short: