# CresOWLve: Benchmarking Creative Problem-Solving Over Real-World Knowledge

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03374 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03374/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 50 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Apr 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-benchmarks-and-evaluation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 50)

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## Abstract (arXiv)

Creative problem-solving requires combining multiple cognitive abilities, including logical reasoning, lateral thinking, analogy-making, and commonsense knowledge, to discover insights that connect seemingly unrelated pieces of information. However, most existing benchmarks for large language models (LLMs) evaluate only specific components of this process. Moreover, many creativity-oriented benchmarks rely on artificially constructed brainteasers or contrived scenarios that do not reflect how creative problem-solving occurs in real-world settings. To address this gap, we introduce CresOWLve (containing 2,061 examples across five difficulty levels), a benchmark for evaluating creative problem-solving using puzzles grounded in real-world knowledge. Problems in CresOWLve require employing multiple creative thinking strategies, retrieving facts from diverse domains, and creatively combining them to arrive at a solution. Evaluating several frontier non-thinking and thinking LLMs, we show that CresOWLve remains highly challenging. Our analysis reveals a consistent performance gap: models perform substantially better on factual questions than on creative ones (up to -17% drop). While models can often retrieve the relevant knowledge, they struggle to form the non-obvious creative connections required to integrate the knowledge and arrive at the correct answer.