mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

BeyondBench: Contamination-Resistant Evaluation of Reasoning in Language Models

arXiv 2509.24210 ↗First posted 29 Sep 2025cs.CL cs.AI cs.LGcited by 8

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation

Abstract (arXiv)

Evaluating language models fairly is increasingly difficult as static benchmarks risk contamination by training data, obscuring whether models truly reason or recall. We introduce BeyondBench, an evaluation framework using algorithmic problem generation to create mathematically grounded problems on the fly, ensuring each test remains uncontaminated. Our framework covers 44 algorithmic tasks with 117 variations across three difficulty levels: the Easy Suite (29 tasks) for arithmetic and statistics, the Medium Suite (5 tasks, 49 variations) for sequence patterns and reasoning, and the Hard Suite (10 tasks, 68 variations) for NP-complete and constraint satisfaction problems. Each task draws from a space exceeding 10^15 unique instances, with deterministically verified solutions. We evaluated 101 language models (85 open-source, 16 closed-source), spanning 0.5B to 141B parameters and multiple quantization schemes, using three-fold evaluation for robustness. Results reveal consistent reasoning deficiencies, with performance degrading sharply as complexity increases. In Hard Suite evaluations, Gemini-2.5-pro, Llama-3.3-70B, and Qwen2.5-72B achieved accuracies of 56.21%, 27.16%, and 33.37% respectively. Performance drops significantly without tool usage, with GPT-5, GPT-5-mini, and GPT-5-nano showing declines of 16.81%, 15.86%, and 43.95% in overall accuracy. Contamination resistance rests on three guarantees: (i) the problem space vastly exceeds any static dataset, (ii) every instance has a deterministically verifiable solution, and (iii) isomorphic transformations yield semantically equivalent but syntactically novel problems. BeyondBench redefines reasoning evaluation via genuine algorithmic problem-solving. Our leaderboard is at https://ctrl-gaurav.github.io/BeyondBench/, Python package at https://pypi.org/project/beyondbench/, and codebase at https://github.com/ctrl-gaurav/BeyondBench.

Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 36 of its 69 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2025.

Builds on

36 of 69 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Qwen3 Technical Report14 May
  2. 2025Nondeterministic Polynomial-time Problem Challenge: An Ever-Scaling Reasoning Benchmark for LLMs15 Apr
  3. 2025Benchmarking Reasoning Robustness in Large Language Models6 Mar
  4. 2025ThinkBench: Dynamic Out-of-Distribution Evaluation for Robust LLM Reasoning22 Feb

Other references · 32

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  2. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
  3. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,371
  4. 2024Qwen2.5 Technical Reportcited by 4,942
  5. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,796
  6. 2022GPTQ: Accurate Post-Training Quantization for Generative Pre-trained Transformerscited by 1,919
  7. 2025gpt-oss-120b & gpt-oss-20b Model Cardcited by 1,386
  8. 2024OlympiadBench: A Challenging Benchmark for Promoting AGI with Olympiad-Level Bilingual Multimodal Scientific Problemscited by 1,136
  9. 2024Qwen2.5-Math Technical Report: Toward Mathematical Expert Model via Self-Improvementcited by 1,090
  10. 2024Do NOT Think That Much for 2+3=? On the Overthinking of o1-Like LLMscited by 570
  11. 2025Qwen3-Omni Technical Reportcited by 497
  12. 2025The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexitycited by 302
20 more
  1. 2025MathArena: Evaluating LLMs on Uncontaminated Math Competitionscited by 297
  2. 2025The Danger of Overthinking: Examining the Reasoning-Action Dilemma in Agentic Taskscited by 152
  3. 2024Benchmark Data Contamination of Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 147
  4. 2025REASONING GYM: Reasoning Environments for Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewardscited by 130
  5. 2022FP8 Quantization: The Power of the Exponentcited by 88
  6. 2025Reasoning or Memorization? Unreliable Results of Reinforcement Learning Due to Data Contaminationcited by 82
  7. 2024Dynamic Evaluation of Large Language Models by Meta Probing Agentscited by 54
  8. 2023Data Contamination Quiz: A Tool to Detect and Estimate Contamination in Large Language Modelscited by 47
  9. 2024Reasoning in Token Economies: Budget-Aware Evaluation of LLM Reasoning Strategiescited by 45
  10. 2025Recent Advances in Large Langauge Model Benchmarks against Data Contamination: From Static to Dynamic Evaluationcited by 38
  11. 2025A Survey on Data Contamination for Large Language Modelscited by 35
  12. 2025Plan and Budget: Effective and Efficient Test-Time Scaling on Reasoning Large Language Modelscited by 32
  13. 2025BudgetThinker: Empowering Budget-aware LLM Reasoning with Control Tokenscited by 29
  14. 2025Comment on The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexitycited by 23
  15. 2024FCoReBench: Can Large Language Models Solve Challenging First-Order Combinatorial Reasoning Problems?cited by 16
  16. 2025How Contaminated Is Your Benchmark? Quantifying Dataset Leakage in Large Language Models with Kernel Divergencecited by 15
  17. 2025Seemingly Simple Planning Problems are Computationally Challenging: The Countdown Gamecited by 9
  18. 2025Capabilities of GPT-5 across critical domains: Is it the next breakthrough?cited by 6
  19. 2025Do LLMs Overthink Basic Math Reasoning? Benchmarking the Accuracy-Efficiency Tradeoff in Language Modelscited by 5
  20. 2025Rethinking the Illusion of Thinkingcited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 7.

8 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Functional Benchmarks for Robust Evaluation of Reasoning Performance, and the Reasoning Gap
  2. 2025ReliableMath: Benchmark of Reliable Mathematical Reasoning on Large Language Models
  3. 2026Beyond Output Correctness: Benchmarking and Evaluating Large Language Model Reasoning in Coding Tasks
  4. 2024RUPBench: Benchmarking Reasoning Under Perturbations for Robustness Evaluation in Large Language Models
  5. 2025PBEBench: A Multi-Step Programming by Examples Reasoning Benchmark inspired by Historical Linguistics
  6. 2025Challenging the Boundaries of Reasoning: An Olympiad-Level Math Benchmark for Large Language Models
  7. 2026EvalQReason: A Framework for Step-Level Reasoning Evaluation in Large Language Models
  8. 2024LogicAsker: Evaluating and Improving the Logical Reasoning Ability of Large Language Models