Tonight's Episode
This week's stories are staged as a Sicilian puppet show. Two knights joust at the center while one of them carries a picket sign. Three small paladins chase each other in a circle with a rock, a scroll and a pair of shears. A wooden drum wound with sausage casing stands at stage left, and a woman sits up in bed to tell her husband some news. The carved cart panels around the stage hold the rest: a firehouse where a knight bows like a valet, a copper dragon on a liver-shaped hill, a baby in a scanner, a tin automaton with a very long bill, and a man in a black turtleneck with one small vial and a large bucket of popcorn.
Why this style
Opera dei Pupi is the Sicilian marionette theater that performed the Carolingian cycle, the paladins of Charlemagne, as a serial. Audiences came back evening after evening to follow the story, and the painted poster outside the theater (the cartello) was divided into squares, one per episode, with a sheet marked "Oggi" (today) pinned to the one being played. That is the structure of a weekly newsletter, which is why the proscenium reads TONIGHT'S EPISODE. The week also had a tournament in nearly every section. Unionized knights at a dinner theater. A three-way game nobody can win. A robot second reader that thirteen radiographers overruled 718 times out of 729. And a ballot that entered the arena at a firehouse and left in a locked bag.
It is a first for the feature. In more than 300 art weeks there has been no Sicilian entry. The style has two schools. In Catania, the puppets stand 110 to 130 cm, weigh up to 30 kg, have rigid legs, and are worked from a bridge above the backdrop. In Palermo they are about 90 cm, have jointed knees, and are worked from the wings at the puppets' own level. UNESCO proclaimed the tradition a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001 and inscribed it on the Representative List in 2008. The standard text the puppeteers worked from was Giusto Lo Dico's Storia dei Paladini di Francia, published in installments from 1858. The painted panels of the Sicilian cart, the carretto, carried the same paladins for people who could not read.
The four renderings
The most complete. All six lettered strings are spelled right, the valet-knight bows with the sticker, the judges carry a padlocked bag, the $314 and $97 scrolls hang side by side, and the spectators are eating chicken with their hands. It also added lemons, cherubs and painted rosettes, which are real carretto vocabulary nobody asked for. The scribe in the bubble is writing at a desk. It painted "[MODEL]" literally in the signature, and its knights have no control rods, so this is a painting of knights, not a puppet show.
The only drum that reads as sausage casing, wound in pink coils with a village hand pump beside it. The knights hang from strings, the crowd carries the syringe, the sugar cube and a mold-spotted shield, and the spectators are eating oranges. It signed its own name. The sticker came out as VSTOD, and the man in the turtleneck has no face at all, a black void above the collar, which makes him the most copyright-safe portrait of this subject anyone has produced.
The only one that understood the assignment as a puppet show. Strings rise from every knight and from the spectators too, and the chimp referee is in full stripes. Clean lettering on all six strings and a real signature. But the dialysis drum became a brass still, the pennants moved from the challenger to the crowd, the firehouse panel split into four small cells with a referee driving the fire engine, and the file is the smallest of the four.
The cleanest composition and the sharpest file, with KOLFF 1945 lettered on the enamel tub. Then the problems. It painted "[MODEL]" literally, twice. It turned phrases from the prompt into speech bubbles ("Rival sign holders") and lettered the firehouse FIRE PLEE SANBT. The valet-knight became a man in a suit, the locked bag became a briefcase, the $97 physician is missing, and the drum sits above the tub with a faucet rather than in it.
Scorecard
| Test | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Grok | Gemini |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All six strings spelled right | ✓ | ✗ VSTOD | ✓ | ✗ $97 missing, extra labels |
| Signed its own name | ✗ [MODEL] | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ [MODEL], twice |
| Puppets on rods or strings | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Valet-knight bowing with sticker | ✓ | ✓ | Half (holds it, no bow) | ✗ man in a suit |
| Judges with a locked bag | ✓ | ✓ | Half (sack, no lock) | ✗ briefcase |
| $314 and $97 scrolls | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | $314 only |
| Drum wound with sausage casing, in the tub | Half | ✓ | ✗ brass still | Half (above the tub) |
| Car water pump on the axle | ✗ | ✗ hand pump | ✗ | ✗ faucet |
| Nine pennants on the challenger | 7 or 8 | 6 | 5, on the crowd | 7 |
| Syringe, mold shield, sugar cube in the crowd | ✓ | ✓ | Mostly | Shield only |
| Spectators eating with their hands | ✓ chicken | ✓ oranges | ✗ | ✗ |
| Lizard, chimp referee, pistachios | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Turtleneck, one vial, popcorn, sloth | ✓ | ✓ faceless | ✓ | ✓ |
What we learned
- Nobody drew nine. The challenger was supposed to trail nine pennants, one per historical reversal in the post. The models drew five, six, seven and eight. Counting past four remains the hardest instruction in the prompt.
- Half the models still cannot find their own name. The prompt said to sign "Art by [MODEL]." Grok and Perplexity signed. ChatGPT and Gemini painted the brackets. This happened on the Sun Stone week too, so the standing fix stands. Type the name in by hand.
- Two models drew a puppet show. Two drew a painting of knights. The control rods and strings are the one detail that makes it Opera dei Pupi. Grok and Perplexity drew them. ChatGPT and Gemini, the two best painters, left them out.
- The dialysis machine defeated everyone. A wooden drum wound with sausage casing, dipping into an enamel tub, with a car water pump on the axle. The models produced a cast-iron mill, a brass still, a drum on a faucet, and one drum that at least had casing on it. No car part anywhere, which is fitting, since none of the four has ever seen a 1945 Ford.
- Gemini reads the prompt as a script. "Two rival sign holders share a thermos" became a speech bubble reading "Rival sign holders." A description of a thing became a label on the thing. This is the same failure as painting the brackets, and the same model.
- The best Holmes has no face. The prompt banned any real person's likeness. Perplexity solved it by painting a black void above the turtleneck. It is the most unsettling object on any of the four canvases and the only one a lawyer would sign off on.
The key
- Firehouse, bowing knight, I VOTED, two judges with a locked bag. The opening. A provisional ballot, two election judges who explained its journey, and a poll worker with the enthusiasm of a hotel valet.
- Copper dragon on a liver-shaped hill, scribe in a bubble. The first patient dosed with in vivo prime editing for Wilson's disease. The artifact
- Baby in a scanner, portrait, hourglass. Awake infants in an fMRI, shown a photograph for two seconds. Remembered for a Minute
- Challenger with nine pennants, crowd with syringe, mold shield, sugar cube, biplane, pistachios. Nine medical reversals in one X post, against insulin, penicillin, the polio vaccine and every plane that did not crash. Nine Reversals, One Post
- Automaton with a $314 scroll, physician with $97, radiographer waving it off. What the models order, what the doctors ordered, and 718 of 729 overrides. The AI Impact artifact
- Wooden drum, sausage casing, enamel tub, KOLFF 1945, a woman pointing at her husband, a windmill. This week's JERKFoW. Willem Kolff's first dialysis machine, and the first life it saved.
- Three paladins with a rock, a scroll and shears; a lizard; a chimp referee. The World Rock Paper Scissors Association, and the loop that also describes lizard mating and bacterial toxins. The Science of Rock Paper Scissors
- The joust, ON STRIKE, a nervous substitute king, a jester, tired horses. Medieval Times, where the knights unionized. Knights Will Be Knights
- Turtleneck, one vial, popcorn, a sloth. You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder's three-hour reality distortion field about Elizabeth Holmes.
The prompt
A painted Sicilian puppet theater (Opera dei Pupi) stage seen head-on in mid-performance, surrounded by a wide border of carved and painted carretto siciliano cart panels, each panel a separate scene inside a gilded carved frame with rosettes and scrollwork. Flat, hard-edged vernacular oil painting in vermilion red, cobalt blue, chrome yellow, emerald green and gold, every surface decorated, no empty space. The puppets are armored paladin knights in shiny embossed tin and brass armor with tall colored plumes, stiff poses, wide painted eyes, visible iron control rods rising from their heads. Portrait format, 3:4. Center stage, main action: two armored puppet knights on horseback joust in a sand arena in front of tiers of painted spectators eating chicken with their hands. One knight carries a wooden picket sign lettered ON STRIKE. On a painted balcony a nervous substitute king in an oversized crown and a jester look on. The horses look tired. In the foreground three small puppet knights chase each other in a circle, one holding a rock, one holding a paper scroll, one holding a pair of shears; a spotted lizard sits on the stage rail and a chimpanzee in a referee's sash watches. At stage left stands a wooden drum wound with translucent sausage casing dipping into a white enamel tub of water, with a car water-pump bolted to its axle and a paper tag lettered KOLFF 1945; beside it a woman sits up in a bed pointing a stern finger at a dismayed husband; a Dutch windmill is painted on the backdrop behind them. Across the top of the proscenium a painted scroll lettered TONIGHT'S EPISODE. In a painted theater box at top center, a figure in a black turtleneck holds up a single tiny vial of blood beside an enormous bucket of popcorn, with a jungle and a sloth painted on the wall behind. Border panels, clockwise from lower left: Lower left panel: a red firehouse with a brass fire engine; a puppet knight bows deeply like a hotel valet and offers a round sticker lettered I VOTED; two robed election judges carry a locked canvas bag along a painted path; two rival sign holders share a thermos. Upper left panel: a copper-scaled dragon coiled around a liver-shaped red hill, and a soap bubble floating toward it carrying a tiny scribe with a quill. Upper right panel: a baby in a toy tin helmet lying inside a barrel-shaped scanner, looking at a small portrait held up by a puppeteer's hand, with a tiny hourglass beside it. Right panel: a lone challenger knight galloping with nine small tattered pennants streaming behind him toward a cheerful crowd of knights carrying a syringe, a green mold-covered shield, a sugar cube and an anesthesia mask; a biplane in the painted sky; pistachio shells scattered on the ground. Lower right panel: a tin automaton knight unrolls a very long scroll lettered $314 next to a human physician holding a short scroll lettered $97, while a radiographer holds an X-ray up to the light and waves the automaton away. Lettering, exactly and only these: TONIGHT'S EPISODE, ON STRIKE, KOLFF 1945, I VOTED, $314, $97. Painted in a 19th-century Sicilian sign-painter's hand. Negative: no modern photographic realism, no 3D render, no anime, no comic-book halftone, no empty backgrounds, no muted or grey palette, no watermark, no brand logos, no company crests, no named characters, no real person's face, no extra text, no misspelled words, no extra limbs or duplicate heads on the puppets. Sign the lower corner "Art by [MODEL]" in a red brush script.
Background: Opera dei Pupi (Wikipedia) and the UNESCO listing. Images generated by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok and Gemini from the same prompt. The What Adam Is Reading archive.