Benchmark Almanac

StrategyQA

Dropped

Models answer 2,780 yes or no questions that need implicit multi-step reasoning, such as whether Aristotle used a laptop. Scoring is accuracy.

Released
January 2021
Kind
Language reasoning
Level
Everyday
Scored
Checked automatically
Answers
Multiple choice
Tasks
All public
Strongest model tested
PaLM 2-L #195 on the capability index
Last in a launch post
May 2023, dropped after it saturated
Last model added
April 2025

In the authors’ words

A key limitation in current datasets for multi-hop reasoning is that the required steps for answering the question are mentioned in it explicitly. In this work, we introduce StrategyQA, a question answering (QA) benchmark where the required reasoning steps are implicit in the question, and should be inferred using a strategy. A fundamental challenge in this setup is how to elicit such creative questions from crowdsourcing workers, while covering a broad range of potential strategies. We propose a data collection procedure that combines term-based priming to inspire annotators, careful control over the annotator population, and adversarial filtering for eliminating reasoning shortcuts. Moreover, we annotate each question with (1) a decomposition into reasoning steps for answering it, and (2) Wikipedia paragraphs that contain the answers to each step. Overall, StrategyQA includes 2,780 examples, each consisting of a strategy question, its decomposition, and evidence paragraphs. Analysis shows that questions in StrategyQA are short, topic-diverse, and cover a wide range of strategies. Empirically, we show that humans perform well (87%) on this task, while our best baseline reaches an accuracy of ~66%.

Abstract of Did Aristotle Use a Laptop? A Question Answering Benchmark with Implicit Reasoning Strategies (arXiv:2101.02235, CC0)
2
Models scored in lab cards
1
Launch post lists it, from 1 lab
1
System card reports it, from 1 lab

PaLM 2-L leads with 90.4%

Best score per model as labs report them in their own cards. Labs pick their own settings, so these compare less cleanly than independent runs.

  1. 1 PaLM 2-L 90.4%
  2. 2 Cohere Command A 76.7%

Source: Labs’ model cards

#ModelScoreSettingDateSource
1 PaLM 2-L 90.4% May 2023 Lab model card
2 Cohere Command A 76.7% Apr 2025 Lab model card

Its lab’s own number for PaLM 2-L passed 85% in May 2023

All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.

Reported by the lab in its model card
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2023 2024 2025 Near the ceiling (85%) PaLM 2-L 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2023 2024 2025 Near the ceiling (85%) PaLM 2-L

Source: Labs’ model cards

Labs dropped it from launch posts once the best score passed 85%

Launch posts from every lab that has listed it, one tick per post. Tall colored ticks include it, and short gray ones leave it out.

Google DeepMind
DateLaunch postScoreAs the post writes it
May 10, 2023 PaLM 2-L 90.4 StrategyQA (6), CoT + SC

One system card reports it

Besides launch posts, we read the system cards, model cards and technical reports labs publish with a release. They report far more, including safety and frontier-risk tests.

DateDocumentScoreAs the document writes itSection
Apr 1, 2025 Cohere Command A technical report 76.7 StrategyQA with search tool, LLM-jury correctness (Table 4) Capabilities

More in Knowledge

All 121 in Knowledge
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  • SuperGPQA In use 26,529 graduate-level multiple-choice questions across 285 disciplines. Accuracy. Qwen 3.6 Max (Preview) 73.9%
  • WideSearch In use 200 bilingual broad info-seeking tasks: agent collects many atomic facts into a table. Scored by success rate and row/item F1. Tencent Hy4 preview 83.9%
  • BBEH micro average In use Models solve harder replacements for each of the 23 BIG-Bench Hard tasks, 4,520 examples in total. The score is the share of all examples answered correctly. Gemma 4 31B IT 74.4%
  • KMMLU-Pro In use Models answer multiple-choice questions taken from Korean National Professional Licensure exams. It tests professional knowledge used in Korean industry. Solar Pro 4 79.2%
  • HLE-Verified In use Verified and revised version of Humanity's Last Exam (1,811 items) with uncertain items removed. Seed2.0 Pro 73.6%