Golden Goose: A Simple Trick to Synthesize Unlimited RLVR Tasks from Unverifiable Internet Text
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reinforcement learning for reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has become a cornerstone for unlocking complex reasoning in Large Language Models (LLMs). Yet, scaling up RL is bottlenecked by limited existing verifiable data, where improvements increasingly saturate over prolonged training. To overcome this, we propose Golden Goose, a simple trick to synthesize unlimited RLVR tasks from unverifiable internet text by constructing a multiple-choice question-answering version of the fill-in-the-middle task. Given a source text, we prompt an LLM to identify and mask key reasoning steps, then generate a set of diverse, plausible distractors. This enables us to leverage reasoning-rich unverifiable corpora typically excluded from prior RLVR data construction (e.g., science textbooks) to synthesize GooseReason-0.7M, a large-scale RLVR dataset with over 0.7 million tasks spanning mathematics, programming, and general scientific domains. Empirically, GooseReason effectively revives models saturated on existing RLVR data, yielding robust, sustained gains under continuous RL and achieving new state-of-the-art results for 1.5B and 4B-Instruct models across 15 diverse benchmarks. Finally, we deploy Golden Goose in a real-world setting, synthesizing RLVR tasks from raw FineWeb scrapes for the cybersecurity domain, where no prior RLVR data exists. Training Qwen3-4B-Instruct on the resulting data GooseReason-Cyber sets a new state-of-the-art in cybersecurity, surpassing a 7B domain-specialized model with extensive domain-specific pre-training and post-training. This highlights the potential of automatically scaling up RLVR data by exploiting abundant, reasoning-rich, unverifiable internet text.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 25 of its 33 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Jan 2026.
Builds on
25 of 33 references.
Closest ancestors · 6
Same direction, newest first
- 2026SCALER:Synthetic Scalable Adaptive Learning Environment for Reasoning8 Jan
- 2025Reasoning Core: A Scalable RL Environment for LLM Symbolic Reasoning22 Sep
- 2025Online Difficulty Filtering for Reasoning Oriented Reinforcement Learning4 Apr
- 2025Big-Math: A Large-Scale, High-Quality Math Dataset for Reinforcement Learning in Language Models24 Feb
- 2025Process Reinforcement through Implicit Rewards3 Feb
- 2025REINFORCE++: Stabilizing Critic-Free Policy Optimization with Global Advantage Normalization4 Jan
Other references · 19
- 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
- 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,203
- 2023GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmarkcited by 2,748
- 2024LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Codecited by 1,906
- 2022Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCodecited by 1,427
- 2022Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Modelscited by 1,359
- 2023Is Your Code Generated by ChatGPT Really Correct? Rigorous Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code Generationcited by 1,332
- 2021Measuring Coding Challenge Competence With APPScited by 879
- 2025REASONING GYM: Reasoning Environments for Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewardscited by 121
- 2025The Art of Scaling Reinforcement Learning Compute for LLMscited by 91
- 2024CTIBench: A Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs in Cyber Threat Intelligencecited by 61
- 2025MegaScience: Pushing the Frontiers of Post-Training Datasets for Science Reasoningcited by 56
7 more
- 2024CyberMetric: A Benchmark Dataset based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Evaluating LLMs in Cybersecurity Knowledgecited by 55
- 2025rStar-Coder: Scaling Competitive Code Reasoning with a Large-Scale Verified Datasetcited by 49
- 2025RLVE: Scaling Up Reinforcement Learning for Language Models with Adaptive Verifiable Environmentscited by 43
- 2025SCP-116K: A High-Quality Problem-Solution Dataset and a Generalized Pipeline for Automated Extraction in the Higher Education Science Domaincited by 30
- 2025Leveraging Online Olympiad-Level Math Problems for LLMs Training and Contamination-Resistant Evaluationcited by 29
- 2025Primus: A Pioneering Collection of Open-Source Datasets for Cybersecurity LLM Trainingcited by 23
- 2024The Need for a Big World Simulator: A Scientific Challenge for Continual Learningcited by 5
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.
9 papers.
- 2026SPADE: Self-Play in Adaptive Synthetic Executable Environmentscited by 6
- 2026Cog-DRIFT: Exploration on Adaptively Reformulated Instances Enables Learning from Hard Reasoning Problemscited by 4
- 2026QUBRIC: Co-Designing Queries and Rubrics for RL Beyond Verifiable Rewardscited by 1
- 2026Document Reconstruction Unlocks Scalable Long-Context RLVRcited by 0
- 2026SUPERNOVA: Eliciting General Reasoning in LLMs with Reinforcement Learning on Natural Instructionscited by 0
- 2026It Takes One to Bias Them All: Breaking Bad with One-Shot GRPOcited by 0
- 2026Knowing When Thinking Is Not Enough: Teaching Small Reasoning Models to Reason Beyond Their Parametric Knowledgecited by 0
- 2026When a Data Artifact Isn't a Shortcut: Causal Auditing of Synthetic RLVR Corporacited by 0
- 2026Effective Synthetic Data Curation Requires Group-Level Signalscited by 0
- 2026Effective Synthetic Data Curation Requires Group-Level Signals30 Sep 2026
- 2026Knowing When Thinking Is Not Enough: Teaching Small Reasoning Models to Reason Beyond Their Parametric Knowledge28 Sep 2026
- 2026When a Data Artifact Isn't a Shortcut: Causal Auditing of Synthetic RLVR Corpora20 Sep 2026
- 2026SPADE: Self-Play in Adaptive Synthetic Executable Environments19 Aug 2026
- 2026It Takes One to Bias Them All: Breaking Bad with One-Shot GRPO9 Jun 2026
- 2026QUBRIC: Co-Designing Queries and Rubrics for RL Beyond Verifiable Rewards2 Jun 2026
- 2026SUPERNOVA: Eliciting General Reasoning in LLMs with Reinforcement Learning on Natural Instructions9 Apr 2026
- 2026Cog-DRIFT: Exploration on Adaptively Reformulated Instances Enables Learning from Hard Reasoning Problems6 Apr 2026
- 2026Document Reconstruction Unlocks Scalable Long-Context RLVR9 Feb 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025Extending RLVR to Open-Ended Tasks via Verifiable Multiple-Choice Reformulation
- 2025RAVR: Reference-Answer-guided Variational Reasoning for Large Language Models
- 2025RLPR: Extrapolating RLVR to General Domains without Verifiers
- 2026To Mix or To Merge: Toward Multi-Domain Reinforcement Learning for Large Language Models
- 2025Reinforcement Learning for Reasoning in Large Language Models with One Training Example
- 2026DARL: Encouraging Diverse Answers for General Reasoning without Verifiers
- 2026Rethinking Multiple-Choice Questions for RLVR: Unlocking Potential via Distractor Design
- 2026Adaptive Ability Decomposing for Unlocking Large Reasoning Model Effective Reinforcement Learning