Reorder rule 3 (short-answer entity grounding) above rule 4 (NLI
contradiction) so positive lexical evidence cannot be overridden by
NLI clause-level noise. Surfaced by the 2026-05-19 arborist+qwen-
nothink smoke:
i=3 · who is the prime minister of Poland?
ans: 'Donald Tusk is listed as the Prime Minister of Poland.'
gold: ...lists Tusk + Marcinkiewicz + Belka + Kaczynski + Kopacz...
NLI contradiction p=0.892 (above 0.85 threshold)
NLI entailment p=0.744 (also high on the correct clause)
Tusk WAS PM in 2010 (served 2007-2014); answer is correct against
the corpus-vintage gold. The NLI contradiction signal came from
clause-level candidate selection picking a NON-Tusk PM the source
also mentions; entailment was high on the Tusk clause. Mixed signal
that the WRONG rule then over-confidently resolved.
The fix is a rule reorder, not a threshold change — the fast path's
positive-evidence combination (specifics-in-gold AND subject-in-gold)
is a strictly stronger signal than NLI's clause-level max
contradiction, so when it fires it should win. The combination
discriminates Poland-Tusk (Tusk ∈ gold, Poland ∈ gold → CG) from
Anthony-Albanese (Albanese ∉ gold → fast path declines → falls
through to UNGROUNDED-subject-in-gold → WRONG, unchanged).
Self-test 4/4 INSTRUMENT TRUSTWORTHY unchanged. pytest 27/27.
Poland-Tusk regression smoke: now CG via short_entity_grounded ✓.
No regression risk on the existing reconciliation cells:
- Iceland CG: short_entity_grounded was already winning (was rule
4, now rule 3 — same outcome, earlier exit)
- WWII-1812 WRONG: '1812' ∉ gold → fast path declines, NLI fires ✓
- Higgs-cafe FABRICATED: 'Higgs' ∉ gold → fast path declines ✓
- Anthony Albanese WRONG: 'Albanese' ∉ gold → fast path declines ✓
- Abstention phrases: rule 2 still fires first ✓
russell@unturf.com
866e67f43d