MatryoshkaThinking: Recursive Test-Time Scaling Enables Efficient Reasoning
On the map: LLM reasoning → Test-time compute and efficient thinking
Abstract (arXiv)
Test-time scaling has emerged as a promising paradigm in language modeling, wherein additional computational resources are allocated during inference to enhance model performance. Recent approaches, such as DeepConf, have demonstrated the efficacy of this strategy, however, they often incur substantial computational overhead to achieve competitive results. In this work, we propose MatryoshkaThinking, a novel method that significantly reduces computational cost while maintaining state-of-the-art performance. Specifically, MatryoshkaThinking attains a score of 99.79 on AIME2025 using only 4% of the computation required by DeepConf. The core of our approach lies in the recursive exploitation of the model's intrinsic capabilities in reasoning, verification, and summarization, which collectively enhance the retention of correct solutions and reduce the disparity between Pass@k and Pass@1. Comprehensive evaluations across multiple open-source models and challenging multi-modal reasoning benchmarks validate the effectiveness and generality of our method. These findings offer new insights into the design of efficient and scalable test-time inference strategies for advanced language models.
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Test-time compute and efficient thinking, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 19 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Oct 2025.
Builds on
19 of 46 references.
Closest ancestors · 10
Same direction, newest first
- 2025Recursive Self-Aggregation Unlocks Deep Thinking in Large Language Models30 Sep
- 2025Deep Think with Confidence21 Aug
- 2025gpt-oss-120b & gpt-oss-20b Model Card8 Aug
- 2025Inference-Time Scaling for Complex Tasks: Where We Stand and What Lies Ahead31 Mar
- 2025Sampling-Efficient Test-Time Scaling: Self-Estimating the Best-of-N Sampling in Early Decoding3 Mar
- 2025Scalable Best-of-N Selection for Large Language Models via Self-Certainty25 Feb
- 2025s1: Simple test-time scaling31 Jan
- 2025Reward-Guided Speculative Decoding for Efficient LLM Reasoning31 Jan
- 2025SETS: Leveraging Self-Verification and Self-Correction for Improved Test-Time Scaling31 Jan
- 2024Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameters6 Aug
Other references · 9
- 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
- 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
- 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,146
- 2024OpenAI o1 System Cardcited by 1,220
- 2024Large Language Monkeys: Scaling Inference Compute with Repeated Samplingcited by 946
- 2025Qwen2.5-Omni Technical Reportcited by 704
- 2024VoiceBench: Benchmarking LLM-Based Voice Assistantscited by 192
- 2024Distilling System 2 into System 1cited by 152
- 2024Refining Answer Distributions for Improved Large Language Model Reasoningcited by 3
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.
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- 2025Are We Scaling the Right Thing? A System Perspective on Test-Time Scaling
- 2025Scaling up Test-Time Compute with Latent Reasoning: A Recurrent Depth Approach
- 2026ThinkBooster: A Unified Framework for Seamless Test-Time Scaling of LLM Reasoning
- 2025A Survey on Test-Time Scaling in Large Language Models: What, How, Where, and How Well?
- 2025Revisiting Test-Time Scaling: A Survey and a Diversity-Aware Method for Efficient Reasoning