Grok 4.1 sets seven-step puzzle mark

The interesting part here is not just that Grok 4.1 solved the puzzle, but that it did so with tooling in the loop — exactly where real-world agentic performance is headed.

• –A seven-step solution suggests stronger lookahead and state-tracking than the shallow trial-and-error behavior many models still fall into on puzzle tasks
• –The code-assisted caveat matters because it measures practical reasoning with tools, not pure naked-model performance
• –In a GPT-5.4 comparison video, Grok 4.1 is being used as a competitive benchmark, which says xAI's model is firmly in the frontier-model conversation
• –Grok 4.1 rolled out broadly in late 2025 across Grok's web, X, and mobile surfaces, so these comparisons map to a publicly deployed product rather than a closed demo