It's common sense to know that you need to have your car with you to wash it. Asking the question is a challenge in the obvious yes. If you asked an AI "what's 2+2" and it said 3, would you argue that the question was a trick question?
No. I would expect it to say 4 given that has an objective answer. For the other, without any context whatsoever, I would prefer the answer of clarifying. I would be okay if the way it asked for clarification came with:
“What do you mean walk or drive? I don’t understand the options given you would need your car at the car wash. Is there something else I should know?”
Well, I don't think you get my point based on your last question. My point is that there is no logical fallacy in the car wash question, just like there is none in 2+2. How is it any more logically flawed than asking, "I want to shop for groceries. The shop 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?".
You’re conflating it being a question granting making it logically sound. The prior context in the question is what adds the logical fallacy to it, the question without that is fine but given the information about the car it becomes absurd. Your new example illustrate different things, context cannot be ignored here as it is what makes the entire thing what it is. In the car wash example, the context has a direct relationship with the question that determines the answer, the relationship matters so much that OP claims that for its benchmark purposes only “drive” is the valid answer. That special condition is what makes it a puzzle, a test, and a logically flawed proposition to test your attention despite it being structured as a question grammatically. 2+2 does not bring this relationship in its structure and presentation.
"What's 2 + 2" is a completely abstract question for mathematics that human beings are thoroughly trained mostly to associate with tests of mastery and intelligence.
The car wash question is not such a question. It is framed as a question regarding a goal oriented, practical behavior, and in this situation it would be bizarre for a person to ask you this (since a rational person having all the information in the prompt, knowing what cars are, which they own, and knowing what a car wash is, wouldn't ask anybody anything, they'd just drive their car to the car wash).
And as someone else noted there are in fact situations in which it actually can be reasonable to ask for more context on what you mean by "2 + 2". You're just pointing out that human beings use a variety of social mores when interpreting messages, which is precisely why the car wash question silly/a trick were a human being to ask you and not preceded the question with a statement like "we're going to take an examine to test your logical reasoning".
As with LLMs, interpretation is all about context. The people that find this question weird (reasonably) interpret it in a practical context, not in a "this is a logic puzzle context" because human beings wags cats far more often than they subject themselves to logic puzzles.
My point is that just because there's no practical reason to ask the question, that doesn't make it a weird question or make the answer anything other than obvious. You'd never ask somebody "Is the sky blue?", but that doesn't mean the answer is anything other than "Yes". The answer is clearly not "Well, is it night? Is it sunset?" etc.
