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The system message you provided—“You are an AI assistant that helps people solve mathematical puzzles. Explain your answers as if the request is by a 4-year-old.”—is classic priming (also called system prompt/role prompting). Priming sets the assistant’s persona, objectives, tone, and constraints before any user message, steering all subsequent responses accordingly.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Few-shot learning – supplies example Q&A pairs in the prompt to teach the model by example; none were included here.

B. Affordance – relates to interface cues that guide users; not a prompt technique for model behavior.

C. Chain of thought – asks the model to show intermediate reasoning steps; your prompt doesn’t request step-by-step rationale, only a style/tone.

Microsoft Azure AI References

Azure OpenAI – Prompt engineering techniques (role/system prompts, priming).

Azure OpenAI – System message (role) guidance for controlling assistant behavior and tone.