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LINGOLY-TOO: Disentangling Reasoning from Knowledge with Templatised Orthographic Obfuscation

Jude Khouja, Lingyi Yang, Karolina Korgul, Simeon Hellsten, Vlad A. Neacsu, Harry Mayne, Ryan Othniel Kearns, Andrew M. Bean, Adam Mahdi · Mar 4, 2025 · Citations: 0

How to use this paper page

Coverage: Stale

Use this page to decide whether the paper is strong enough to influence an eval design. It summarizes the abstract plus available structured metadata. If the signal is thin, use it as background context and compare it against stronger hub pages before making protocol choices.

Best use

Background context only

Metadata: Stale

Trust level

Low

Signals: Stale

What still needs checking

Extraction flags indicate low-signal or possible false-positive protocol mapping.

Signal confidence: 0.25

Abstract

Frontier language models demonstrate increasing ability at solving reasoning problems, but their performance is often inflated by circumventing reasoning and instead relying on their expanding knowledge and memorisation capacity. We introduce LINGOLY-TOO, a challenging reasoning benchmark of 1,203 questions and a total of 6,995 sub-questions that counters these shortcuts by applying expert-designed obfuscations to Linguistics Olympiad problems. These obfuscations preserve the underlying solution logic while reducing the likelihood problems are solvable with via knowledge or memorisation. Our experiments show that models exploit shortcuts on the original question as performance markedly drop upon obfuscation. Even the best reasoning models remain highly sensitive, with scores dropping from around 0.59 on original problems to 0.48 after obfuscation. LINGOLY-TOO disentangles reasoning from knowledge, offering a clearer measure of true reasoning capabilities.

Use caution before copying this protocol

Use this page for context, then validate protocol choices against stronger HFEPX references before implementation decisions.

  • Extraction flags indicate low-signal or possible false-positive protocol mapping.
  • Extraction confidence is 0.25 (below strong-reference threshold).
  • No explicit evaluation mode was extracted from available metadata.

HFEPX Relevance Assessment

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

Background context only.

Main weakness

Extraction flags indicate low-signal or possible false-positive protocol mapping.

Trust level

Low

Eval-Fit Score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Weak / implicit signal

HFEPX Fit

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence: Low

What This Page Found In The Paper

Each field below shows whether the signal looked explicit, partial, or missing in the available metadata. Use this to judge what is safe to trust directly and what still needs full-paper validation.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

Confidence: Low Not found

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

Evidence snippet: Frontier language models demonstrate increasing ability at solving reasoning problems, but their performance is often inflated by circumventing reasoning and instead relying on their expanding knowledge and memorisation capacity.

Evaluation Modes

missing

None explicit

Confidence: Low Not found

Validate eval design from full paper text.

Evidence snippet: Frontier language models demonstrate increasing ability at solving reasoning problems, but their performance is often inflated by circumventing reasoning and instead relying on their expanding knowledge and memorisation capacity.

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

Confidence: Low Not found

No explicit QC controls found.

Evidence snippet: Frontier language models demonstrate increasing ability at solving reasoning problems, but their performance is often inflated by circumventing reasoning and instead relying on their expanding knowledge and memorisation capacity.

Benchmarks / Datasets

partial

DROP

Confidence: Low Direct evidence

Useful for quick benchmark comparison.

Evidence snippet: Our experiments show that models exploit shortcuts on the original question as performance markedly drop upon obfuscation.

Reported Metrics

missing

Not extracted

Confidence: Low Not found

No metric anchors detected.

Evidence snippet: Frontier language models demonstrate increasing ability at solving reasoning problems, but their performance is often inflated by circumventing reasoning and instead relying on their expanding knowledge and memorisation capacity.

Rater Population

partial

Domain Experts

Confidence: Low Direct evidence

Helpful for staffing comparability.

Evidence snippet: We introduce LINGOLY-TOO, a challenging reasoning benchmark of 1,203 questions and a total of 6,995 sub-questions that counters these shortcuts by applying expert-designed obfuscations to Linguistics Olympiad problems.

Human Data Lens

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Domain Experts
  • Unit of annotation: Unknown
  • Expertise required: General
  • Signal basis: Structured extraction plus abstract evidence.

Evaluation Lens

  • Evaluation modes:
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Signal confidence: 0.25
  • Known cautions: low_signal, possible_false_positive

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

DROP

Reported Metrics

No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Frontier language models demonstrate increasing ability at solving reasoning problems, but their performance is often inflated by circumventing reasoning and instead relying on their expanding knowledge and memorisation capacity.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • Frontier language models demonstrate increasing ability at solving reasoning problems, but their performance is often inflated by circumventing reasoning and instead relying on their expanding knowledge and memorisation capacity.
  • We introduce LINGOLY-TOO, a challenging reasoning benchmark of 1,203 questions and a total of 6,995 sub-questions that counters these shortcuts by applying expert-designed obfuscations to Linguistics Olympiad problems.
  • These obfuscations preserve the underlying solution logic while reducing the likelihood problems are solvable with via knowledge or memorisation.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • We introduce LINGOLY-TOO, a challenging reasoning benchmark of 1,203 questions and a total of 6,995 sub-questions that counters these shortcuts by applying expert-designed obfuscations to Linguistics Olympiad problems.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • We introduce LINGOLY-TOO, a challenging reasoning benchmark of 1,203 questions and a total of 6,995 sub-questions that counters these shortcuts by applying expert-designed obfuscations to Linguistics Olympiad problems.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Gap: Evaluation mode is explicit

    No clear evaluation mode extracted.

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Pass: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    Detected: DROP

  • Gap: Metric reporting is present

    No metric terms extracted.

Related Papers

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