#51 — Mon 22 September 2025 by Evan Chen

After all these years, there are some MO problems for which I don't remember anymore how I came up with the solution, and others for which I definitely do. I like it when my students ask me about the latter and not the former, because I'm lazy and it's less work for me to answer their question.

Wouldn't it be convenient if those also turned out to be the more instructive problems? I'm secretly hoping that this laziness happens to causes me to have better taste in problems, but I don't think I'd be able to test that.