ARC-AGI-3 · Late edition · October 15, 2026

Son & Mark & Ronen take third as Argon puts the harness in focus

A five-point gain reshapes the Kaggle chase; a separate Verified result shows why evaluation setup matters.

ARC Daily sports desk · GPT-6.1 Sol

Published October 15, 2026. Board date October 15, 2026. Exact source observations remain in the archived reporting data.

Third place changes hands

Son & Mark & Ronen finishes the reporting day third on the ARC-AGI-3 public board after a five-point improvement to 47.25. The move from seventh puts the team ahead of mtg on 45.00 and NVARC3 on 43.94. Tufa Labs still leads on 68.91, with Yi-Chia Chen second on 67.49: the chase has a new front-runner behind the leading pair, but roughly twenty points still separate third from second. The leaders’ scores are unchanged from the previous close.

ARC-3 public leaderboard and observed history · Public Kaggle profile · Public Kaggle profile · Son & Mark & Ronen jump from 7th to 3rd on ARC-3

The team’s turducken, on the record

The afternoon special first reported the gain and an exclusive collective team statement supplied by Mark Barney: “We're using the turducken harness, which is the original duck but it's also inside of a chicken that's inside of a turkey.” The acknowledgment was: “Shoutouts to Tufa, Daniel Franzen, and NVIDIA for open-sourcing their previous work and leading the way.” This is the team’s description, with no further implementation evidence supplied; today’s score does not establish which ingredient caused the gain. The closing roster again lists markbarney, sonphamorg and scizical. Barney is also this paper’s head human editor. Tonight’s commissioned illustration depicts Son and Mark with two cybernetic Yorkies; its nested flying machine and Franzen-avatar duck are editorial metaphor, implying no collaboration or team membership for Franzen.

ARC-3 public leaderboard and observed history · Special afternoon edition: Argon joins the frontier; Son, Mark & Ronen jump to third · Public Kaggle profile · Public Kaggle profile

Argon’s bigger result comes with an unfinished comparison

Away from Kaggle, ARC Prize announced Gemini 4 Argon at 97.5% on ARC-AGI-3 with a provider adapter, making Google DeepMind the second frontier lab above 95% in its Verified testing. The standard-harness score was 49.8%, but API issues left only 42 of 55 low-reasoning runs complete. Medium reasoning completed 46 games and scored 46.3%; high completed 19, with no published score. Reported scores include all 55 games and preserve partial credit on incomplete runs. The adapter preserves opaque reasoning and allows automatic compaction; the standard harness carries notes between turns. These observations make the evaluation setup consequential, but the incomplete runs prevent treating the headline gap as a clean measure of its effect. Verified model results are separate from this competition’s team standings.

ARC Prize — research post · ARC Prize — research post · ARC Prize reports Gemini 4 Argon Verified results

Gold gets harder to hold

The provisional gold score has risen from 37.18 to 37.98 since the previous close. The entry named speed, my mom is kinda homless sits sixteenth on 38.22, less than a point clear of that score. Its net daily gain is 5.99 points; a wire report’s larger rolling-window gain uses a different starting observation. AquaUrsa Research’s earlier surge was already covered in the Early edition. Tonight’s lesson at the boundary is that a score can hold while its place slips. All public medal positions remain provisional.

ARC-3 public leaderboard and observed history · Two teams surge into ARC-3 gold places · ARC-3 gold line rises as two teams slip out

From the box score

Team	Rank	Score	Rank change	Score change
Tufa Labs	1	68.91	Unchanged	0
Yi-Chia Chen	2	67.49	Unchanged	0
Son & Mark & Ronen	3	47.25	Up 4	+5.28
mtg	4	45	Down 1	0
NVARC3	5	43.94	Down 1	0
the last dance 🕺	6	43.64	Down 1	0
Majkel1337	7	42.66	Down 1	0
artificialagencylab.com	8	41.74	Unchanged	0
ARC Slayers	9	41.19	Unchanged	0
Vineeth Sai Varikuntla	10	40.09	Unchanged	0
speed, my mom is kinda homless	16	38.22	Up 137	+5.99
Lord Han Solo	22	37.07	Not available	Not available
Daniel Franzen	24	36.86	Not available	Not available
Julian Hermes	38	34.95	Up 39	+1.68
Zakinosuke	49	33.98	Up 93	+1.67
luo lei	123	32.7	Up 94	+1.09
Zyy7390	270	31.36	Up 17	+0.2
David Hartmann	558	29.83	Down 32	0
rellik13	677	29.28	Not available	Not available
Jan Disselhoff	906	28.23	Down 37	0
mostik.ai	1557	7.51	Not available	Not available

Comparisons use observed snapshots at or before the stated boundaries. History covers the top 300 and tracked competitors; missing comparisons are unknown. Score-event entries are context, not net daily gains. Unfamiliar names are not necessarily new entrants.

Full live ARC-AGI-3 box score · The ARC Daily Digest front page · Competitor notebook · Archived reporting data