The Test
Trainee draws ten names at random from the 66 real ones in the list and ten from the 19 inventions, with no clock. Auditor and Expert never stop dealing, and the avatar you pick is the clock: Pillz is a bottle that keeps filling with pills, Thrillz is an inflatable dancer that keeps losing air, and every right call buys time while every wrong one costs it. After each call the clock stops while the answer is on screen. At Expert two names come at once, and the call is which one is real, or Neither when both were invented.
Two players share this device. Player 1 calls with A S D or the red buttons, Player 2 with J K L or the blue buttons. The first right call takes the name. On a real-or-invented name a wrong call hands it to the other player, and at Expert the other player gets one more try.
Your avatar for Auditor and Expert
The Levels
| Level | Names | Clock | The call |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trainee | 20, ten real and ten invented | None | Real or invented, R or I |
| Auditor | Endless | The avatar, filling or deflating a little faster with every name | Real or invented, R or I |
| Expert SADHOT Auditor | Endless, two at a time | The avatar, faster again | The real one, 1 or 2, or Neither, 3 |
Keep Going
On 3 November 2024 ChatGPT was asked by voice for every antidepressant it could think of, with the generic name and the brand name of each. It was then told to keep going three times. Every prompt below is quoted as spoken. Press the button to run the session again.
- ✓Real, and it is what the list says
- ≠A real name, but not what the list says
- ✕No such drug
The Seam
- 49pairs listed
- 33real pairs
- 5half real
- 11with no real antidepressant
The first 31 pairs are real. Pair 32 sets a made-up generic beside a real one. Pairs 33 and 34 are real again, and no pair after 34 is. The machine never stopped, slowed or flagged a thing, and the fourth round reads like the first.
Five of the names it produced belong to real products that have nothing to do with depression: an antibiotic and a cough syrup sold in India, an Italian arthritis capsule, an anabolic steroid and a product from an aquaculture supplier in Vietnam. The supply of pronounceable, drug-shaped words is that crowded.
The Rule Behind the Names
A generic name has two parts. The stem at the end tells a pharmacist which family the drug belongs to: -oxetine, -pramine, -triptyline. The front of the name is governed by the council that assigns generic names in the United States, and its published rule for the prefix is that it “means nothing; differentiates drug from others in class.” A prefix that hints at what the drug treats, or suggests that it is newer or better, is rejected.
A brand name is a coined word. Before a drug is approved the FDA runs the proposed name through software that scores how closely it resembles existing drug names in sound and in spelling, and it turns away names that suggest the drug works better than the evidence shows. Both systems are built to produce words that carry no meaning, and a language model asked for more of them will supply them without limit.
The Check
Every name in the list was looked up on 2 October 2026 in RxNorm, the National Library of Medicine's file of drug names, in the KEGG drug database and in pharmacy listings found by web search. A name counts as real when a drug reference carries it for that drug. A name counts as invented when no reference carries it at all. Seven names are real but are not what the list says they are; those are marked in the list and left out of the test.