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connections-rl-results

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reward-over-optimization
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connections-rl: raw evaluation artifacts

Per-puzzle records, bootstrap summaries and analysis outputs backing connections-rl, a two-scale (Qwen2.5-1.5B / 7B), three-seed study of what verifiable-reward RL actually transfers.

This is an artifact bundle for auditing published numbers, not a loadable training dataset, so the dataset viewer is disabled.

Read this before using the numbers

Two conventions in these files are easy to misread. Both have bitten this project already.

1. groups_correct has two different scales depending on the directory.

Location Scale Example
results-7b/, results-seeds-*/ mean count, 0-4 0.346 means 8.6% of groups
results-analysis/passk-*.json fraction, 0-1 (already divided by 4) 0.252 means 25.2% of groups
results-analysis/ckpt-curve-*.json, entropy-kl-*.json fraction, 0-1 field is named semantic_groups_correct

Each board has 4 groups. A 0-4 count of 0.346 is 8.6% of groups, not 34.6%. Paired differences quoted in the write-up use the 0-4 count scale.

2. Every metric under summary is [point_estimate, ci_lower, ci_upper], not three seeds.

A three-element array looks like per-seed values. It is a percentile bootstrap over 1,000 resamples (stats.bootstrap_ci, alpha=0.05, seed=0), returning (mean, lower, upper). Worked example from results-7b/base/metrics.json:

"groups_correct": [0.16049, 0.10494, 0.22222]

means the untrained 7B base solves 0.160 of 4 groups per board (4.0% of groups), 95% CI [0.105, 0.222] on the same 0-4 scale. Per-seed values live in results-seeds/seed_summary.json, which uses plain scalars under per_arm, and explicit mean/sd under across_seed.

Repository layout 

results-7b/                  Qwen2.5-7B main eval (session A), n=162 test puzzles
  base|sft|grpo/
    metrics.json             bootstrap summary, stratified + OVERALL
    records.jsonl            one row per puzzle
  comparisons.json           McNemar + paired-bootstrap between arms
results-seeds-7b/            7B seed replication (session B)
  sft|grpo-seed0|1|2/        metrics.json + records.jsonl
results-seeds-1.5b/          1.5B seed replication (session B)
  sft|grpo-seed0|1|2/        metrics.json + records.jsonl
results-seeds/
  seed_summary.json          per-arm scalars + across-seed mean/sd
  weight_space_7b.txt        cross-seed LoRA update cosine similarity
  weight_space_1.5b.txt
results-analysis/
  passk-7b.json              pass@16, temperature 0.9, best-of-k scoring
  passk-1.5b.json
  ckpt-curve-7b.json/.png    structure vs semantics over GRPO training (val)
  entropy-kl-7b.json/.png    policy entropy + KL from SFT init and base (val)

Not in this repo: results/, the 1.5B main-run eval (session A). It lives in the GitHub repository under results/. The 1.5B numbers quoted in the write-up come from there; the 1.5B files here are the seed-replication session.

File schemas

metrics.json

Field Meaning
arm arm name
n puzzles evaluated (162 for all test-split runs)
n_resamples bootstrap resamples (1000)
summary.OVERALL.<metric> [point, ci_lo, ci_hi] for solve_rate, groups_correct, one_away_rate, invalid_rate, reward
summary.<stratum>.<metric> same, per puzzle category (wordplay, cultural, category, tag-fillin, silent-letter)
groups_correct_distribution histogram of exact groups solved, keys "0"-"4"

records.jsonl, one JSON object per puzzle:

Field Type Meaning
puzzle_id, date, strata int, ISO date, str puzzle identity and category
solved bool all 4 groups correct
groups_correct int 0-4 count, not a fraction
one_away bool exactly one group off
invalid_format bool malformed output or words not on the board
reward float deterministic reward, max 1.6
latency_ms float generation wall time

comparisons.json: mcnemar_p (exact, on solve/no-solve) and solve_rate_diff_ci as [diff, lo, hi] for a - b, plus discordant-pair counts.

passk-*.json: arms.<arm>.summary holds pass_at_k_solve, pass_at_k_valid, best_of_k_groups_correct, each [point, lo, hi]; arms.<arm>.records holds per-puzzle max_groups_correct (an int 0-4) and any_solved / any_valid.

Measurement sessions

Some arms were measured twice under different vLLM serving configurations:

  • Session A: results-7b/ (and results/ on GitHub).
  • Session B: results-seeds-7b/, results-seeds-1.5b/, results-seeds/.

The 7B SFT arm reads 0.346 in session A and 0.321 in session B for the same adapter. Neither is stale. Greedy decoding is not bitwise deterministic across vLLM batching and parallelism layouts, so the two sessions differ on 2 of 162 puzzles for grouping and 3 of 162 for validity. Every GRPO arm reproduces exactly (0 of 162 on all metrics), which corroborates the entropy-collapse finding: the final 7B GRPO policy sits at 0.0099 nats/token and has no borderline decisions to flip. Do not mix sessions inside one comparison.

Headline numbers these files support

Held-out test split, 162 puzzles, 2025-12-15 to 2026-05-29, strictly after every training date. Greedy decoding.

Arm (7B) Solve rate Groups correct (0-4) % of groups Invalid Mean reward
base 0.0% 0.160 4.0% 6.8% 0.165
SFT 1.2% 0.346 8.6% 22.2% 0.197
GRPO 0.0% 0.025 0.6% 0.6% 0.125

GRPO reaches the best structural validity of any arm while collapsing grouping below the untrained base. Full analysis in report/findings.md.

Usage 

import json
from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download, snapshot_download

p = hf_hub_download("jacksonlukas/connections-rl-results",
                    "results-7b/base/metrics.json", repo_type="dataset")
m = json.load(open(p))["summary"]["OVERALL"]

point, lo, hi = m["groups_correct"]          # [point, ci_lo, ci_hi], 0-4 scale
print(f"{point:.3f} of 4 groups = {100 * point / 4:.1f}% of groups, 95% CI [{lo:.3f}, {hi:.3f}]")

# per-puzzle records
local = snapshot_download("jacksonlukas/connections-rl-results", repo_type="dataset")
rows = [json.loads(l) for l in open(f"{local}/results-7b/base/records.jsonl")]
print(sum(r["groups_correct"] for r in rows) / len(rows))   # reproduces `point`

Provenance and licensing

Generated by the evaluation harness in src/connections_rl/eval; the same files are committed in the GitHub repository, which is the source of truth. Derived from the NYT Connections puzzle database in gvc-local. These are model outputs and aggregate statistics, not puzzle content redistribution. Released under MIT; NYT Connections puzzles remain the property of The New York Times.

Citation

If you use this adapter or the accompanying analysis, please cite the repository:

@software{lukas_connections_rl_2026,
  author = {Lukas, Jackson},
  title  = {connections-rl: What Verifiable-Reward RL Actually Transfers},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://github.com/jacksonmlukas/connections-rl},
  note   = {Two-scale, three-seed GRPO study on NYT Connections}
}

The predecessor multi-agent work is published as Snap Out of It (ACL 2025, REALM Workshop).

Contact

Open an issue at https://github.com/jacksonmlukas/connections-rl/issues.
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