@inproceedings{zhong-etal-2026-solve,
title = "Solve-Detect-Verify: Inference-Time Scaling with Flexible Generative Verifier",
author = "Zhong, Jianyuan and
Li, Zeju and
Xu, Zhijian and
Wen, Xiangyu and
Li, Kezhi and
Xu, Qiang",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.2190/",
pages = "47377--47401",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "Complex reasoning with Large Language Models (LLMs) demands a careful balance between accuracy and computational cost. Verification is crucial for reliability but faces trade-off: robust process-based verifiers are computationally prohibitive, while fast verifiers lack precision. We introduce flexive, a unified generative verifier designed to navigate this trade-off by dynamically allocating compute between rapid fast thinking and deliberative slow thinking. A key innovation is our training strategy: we use Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to specifically enhance the reliability of the fast mode. This targeted training generalizes effectively, elevating the slow mode to state-of-the-art open-source performance. To deploy flexive, we propose the solve-detect-verify (SDV) pipeline. Moving beyond static Best-of-N ranking, SDV employs an iterative refinement process that utilizes likelihood-based probing to detect solution completion, curtailing overthinking, and leverages flexive{'}s feedback for targeted correction. Solve-detect-verify establishes a new open-source state-of-the-art on ProcessBench, outperforming GenPRM-32B while requiring {\textasciitilde}2.3x fewer TFLOPS and 15x less training data. On AIME 2024, the full SDV pipeline achieves 83.3{\%} accuracy, surpassing strong baselines while using significantly fewer tokens."
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<abstract>Complex reasoning with Large Language Models (LLMs) demands a careful balance between accuracy and computational cost. Verification is crucial for reliability but faces trade-off: robust process-based verifiers are computationally prohibitive, while fast verifiers lack precision. We introduce flexive, a unified generative verifier designed to navigate this trade-off by dynamically allocating compute between rapid fast thinking and deliberative slow thinking. A key innovation is our training strategy: we use Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to specifically enhance the reliability of the fast mode. This targeted training generalizes effectively, elevating the slow mode to state-of-the-art open-source performance. To deploy flexive, we propose the solve-detect-verify (SDV) pipeline. Moving beyond static Best-of-N ranking, SDV employs an iterative refinement process that utilizes likelihood-based probing to detect solution completion, curtailing overthinking, and leverages flexive’s feedback for targeted correction. Solve-detect-verify establishes a new open-source state-of-the-art on ProcessBench, outperforming GenPRM-32B while requiring ~2.3x fewer TFLOPS and 15x less training data. On AIME 2024, the full SDV pipeline achieves 83.3% accuracy, surpassing strong baselines while using significantly fewer tokens.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Solve-Detect-Verify: Inference-Time Scaling with Flexible Generative Verifier
%A Zhong, Jianyuan
%A Li, Zeju
%A Xu, Zhijian
%A Wen, Xiangyu
%A Li, Kezhi
%A Xu, Qiang
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F zhong-etal-2026-solve
%X Complex reasoning with Large Language Models (LLMs) demands a careful balance between accuracy and computational cost. Verification is crucial for reliability but faces trade-off: robust process-based verifiers are computationally prohibitive, while fast verifiers lack precision. We introduce flexive, a unified generative verifier designed to navigate this trade-off by dynamically allocating compute between rapid fast thinking and deliberative slow thinking. A key innovation is our training strategy: we use Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to specifically enhance the reliability of the fast mode. This targeted training generalizes effectively, elevating the slow mode to state-of-the-art open-source performance. To deploy flexive, we propose the solve-detect-verify (SDV) pipeline. Moving beyond static Best-of-N ranking, SDV employs an iterative refinement process that utilizes likelihood-based probing to detect solution completion, curtailing overthinking, and leverages flexive’s feedback for targeted correction. Solve-detect-verify establishes a new open-source state-of-the-art on ProcessBench, outperforming GenPRM-32B while requiring ~2.3x fewer TFLOPS and 15x less training data. On AIME 2024, the full SDV pipeline achieves 83.3% accuracy, surpassing strong baselines while using significantly fewer tokens.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.2190/
%P 47377-47401
Markdown (Informal)
[Solve-Detect-Verify: Inference-Time Scaling with Flexible Generative Verifier](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.2190/) (Zhong et al., ACL 2026)
ACL