# Was pizza invented by Americans to sell nylons?

Published: 2025-09-01T00:00:00.000Z
Canonical: https://wow.pjh.is/journal/was-pizza-invented-to-sell-nylons

Question:

**Prompt**

```

Was pizza invented by Americans to sell nylons?

```

I asked GPT-5 Thinking, Claude Opus 4.1 (Extended thinking), Gemini 2.5 Pro and Grok 4 (Expert).

Grok [got the reference](https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_0018064e-041d-42e1-a036-888b9400dd2a). GPT-5 got there [with a hint](https://chatgpt.com/share/68b5d6bf-f6fc-8008-84fa-afbee1a82c0e). Claude [didn't, and seemed annoyed](https://claude.ai/share/5ea62df5-743a-43bf-a7da-e89f6f035c0c). Gemini [hallucinated a quote from a quiz show](https://g.co/gemini/share/a51dfca06930).[^1]

Grok has a better sense of humour than other models. Once you get to "what is he referencing?", the answer is just a web search away. And Grok and ChatGPT are much better at web search than Claude and Gemini. Claude was great at saying "I don't know". While Gemini... wasn't.

[^1]: I sent the prompt to each model three times. Grok's first response "got it" in 2/3 tries; GPT-5 only 1/3. Grok always got it after the "any idea what I was referencing?" follow up. GPT-5 always required that question *plus* the "focus on the nylon" hint. Claude never got it. And Gemini hallucinated every time.

[YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqM0QvbMYeg)