this was pretty interesting

so i spend the first hour trying p3 since its geo. i dont make any progress besides inverting a few times.

next i try p1. after trying some small cases i find the bound, and then i found a construction thats based on the bound. the writeup is kind of annoying because the construction is kind of weird, but imo its natural if u find the bound first. also imo its not too hard to find both the construction and bound at the same time if ur just trying small cases and always do whatever "looks" the best . overall i think this problem is probably like 10 mohs. i finish the writeup in 45 minutes

next i do p2. i immediately write rectangle as equal diagonals with same midpoint, which gives me some equations. next i just vp bash and do some casework which solves. imo this is really straightforward if u know the vp idea. also it felt more like a puzzle than a math problem after that. probably like 15 mohs. this also takes me 45 minutes.

i keep trying p3. i dont get anywhere mostly because the conditions are really ugly in the original problem and AHI is ugly in the incircle inverted problem. with about an hour left i resort to trying trig because its the only bash type i know well enough. i realize that i can use trig to handle AHI in the original diagram and ISH in the inverted diagram. i find what AHI is in terms of trig. i begin writing up my progress. with 5 minutes left, i begin chasing ISH in the inverted diagram, which turns out to be pretty easy, and i finish solving it and writing it up with less than a minute left. im surprised that the trig works so well here because its not even really "bashy" since theres no law of sines cosines or fancy trig identities, its just pulling straight from the right angle definitions of trig. my sol was less than a page and a half long. id estimate this at 35 mohs, maybe less

craziest ending to a single day ever, somehow beating mop tests 3 and 4, elmo day 1, and tstst day 2, in all of which i finish a problem in the last minutes.

predicting 777. maybe docks on p3 for very rushed explanations and slightly handwaving.

update: scores released. 777. seems the graders agree with my p1 comments since the bound is less points than the construction in the rubric.

this was less interesting.

i spend the first hour trying p5, again since its geo. i dont get anywhere, but i guess that X is the harmonic conjugate of G on (EFG), and i begin coordbashing a 3-4-5 triangle to check this.

i try p4 next. first i try induction based routes for a while. eventually i get pretty tunnel visioned, but i get up and take a walk and after coming back i found the solution pretty quickly. beautiful problem btw, definitely my favorite on the usemo. id say either 15 or 20 mohs.

next i go back to p5. i finish the coordbash and it confirms that my guess of X was right. i spend the entire rest of my time trying to see how to use harmonics on the problem and dont get anywhere. in the end i just submit my guess for what X is.

i dont try p6 at all since i thought i would be more likely to solve p5.

anyway after the test ended i heard the sol to p5. i have a lot of thoughts on this problem.

first i think its an awful problem, just due to the solution being only angle chasing. next i just think its really weird that all my progress was correct, i found the correct point X, but everything i was doing was taking me farther from solving the problem, especially coordbashing it to confirm i was correct, because the solution uses a different characterization of X that happens to be the same point. so yeah i think this is just a weird case of tunnel vision, since its one where i knew im correct, even though i wasnt "correct".

another reason i didnt solve the problem is just ive become too projective minded, if i wasn't i probably would have found the cyclic quads before the harmonic quad.

anyway i think its good that ive seen this problem and failed to solve it, i think i learned a lot from it

predicting 700. funny how getting the correct point X is probably worth no partials, just cause its the wrong correct point.

update: scores released. 710. idt i really deserve a partial on p5 but the rubrics really generous there.

this was my first time ever taking a test designed to be amc 12 level. so like i didnt take any amc 12 mocks. i didnt take any mocks at all since like july either.

as a result i was not as locked in as i could have been. sillied 2 problems, which i havent done on a single amc since like 2021 spring and maybe even earlier. also wasted a lot of time on p17 from a few mistakes. i ended up bubbling it in in the last 10 seconds.

otherwise i think i did fine, the two problems i didnt have time to try i dont think i would have solved.

i thought the test quality was fine, especially a few of the later problems (p22).

distrib 66666 06606 66666 66666 66B6B -> 129

was more locked in this test, but that might just have been because of how many geos there were.

missed p10, which was actually a crazy problem. i solved everything else except p25, which i solved 2 seconds after time ended. i guess that makes up for usemo day 1.

test quality was kind of weird. there were a lot of geo, but not many were actual geo and barely any were good. imo the best geo on the test was actually the complex numbers problem. also p25 is kind of cute ig.

distrib 66666 66660 66666 66666 6666B -> 139.5

otis is pretty cool.

in chronological order the units ive submitted this term are zgy homography, dnw heavynt, daw realpoly and dcx global. im doing dfy wrapped rn. i also did a bit of dmw courage near the start of the term.

homography is a cool unit. unfortunately it probably indirectly caused me to not solve usemo p5. but who cares, usemo p5 is one problem, the circular points at infinity are forever.

courage is pretty cool.

heavynt is decent. i didnt do much of it this term i just finished it.

realpoly is a nice unit, especially when u can take the derivative.

dcx global (heavy emphasis on dcx) is really good. its really intuitive and straightforward (unlike dcw global which is an awful unit with awful problems). idk why dcx isnt the default unit.

dfy wrapped is better than i was expecting for an fe unit.

in chronological order.

hyperbola tangent to incircle.

2015 C6.

the incircles problem.

2005 IMO 6.

i have 7 blocks ABCDEFG. on days other than wednesday the afternoon is EF break G. on monday morning is AB break CD, on tuesday morning is BA assembly DC, on thursday morning is CD break AB, on friday morning is DC assembly BA. wednesdays are half days and alternate between CA break advisory EG and DB break advisory F. on tuesdays and fridays my first classes dont meet.

first block starts at 8 am and last block ends at 5 pm. all blocks are 50 minutes, except the one before lunch is 70 and the one before that is 40. breaks and assembly are like 45min ish i think

A block is compsci. we're learning java. this class is pretty free because its mostly just problem solving (you can guess how that goes based on what this website is called). this is actually my first time learning a real programming language though (not counting block coding). also the teacher is really chill.

B block is calculus. im in a lower math class than i should be cuz i forgot to apply for summer acceleration. so this class is pretty trivial, i usually spend classes doing otis instead. however sometimes the teacher assigns these random 20 part "real life application" problems that are really annoying just because they're so long. and we have to turn in reports for them. heres the write ups to two problems (actually only 1.5 cuz fsr one of the latexes wouldnt work)from the skydiving thing we did 2 weeks ago. in total they took me like 3 hours to write up. i think i slept at like 4am that night.

C block is chemistry. im taking accelerated chemistry which is nicknamed "death chem" at this school. imo it hasnt been too bad so far. ive done pretty well on the tests and average ig on the labs. its probably the class i have that assigns the most homework

D block is english, finally a class that doesnt start with c but im gonna make up for that by getting a c in this class. bruh why is english so hard. ok so we spent the first half of the term reading macbeth (MACBEATH inconic reference) and the other half writing narratives and whatever. like the first half of the term was fine. but istg i really just dont understand how ur supposed to write a narrative. fsr basically all of 9th and 10th grade year english is about writing narratives. i feel like my narrative quality has only decreased with time. its even more annoying since every teacher has a different opinion of what a good narrative should look like and u get a new teacher every 2 months. like istg the narrative i wrote this term would probably get an a in a previous english class but it got a b, idek how ur supposed to learn anything if what ur trying to learn changes every 2 months. anyway thats not even what i dislike most about english class. so basically at my school theres this thing called "harkness" which is where u have class discussions about some book for the whole class without teacher intervention. i never really hated it but i really do this term. so first of all my class this term is full of yappers that start talking immediately after the last person finishes talking and they dont say anything other than like the last persons point reworded or just like directly reading from the text and then asking some irrelevant question. and thats really bad cuz theres like no time for anyone else to make a point before the topic changes. anyways ive never figured out how to yap in english so like even if i come up with a good point in class i rarely will get a chance to say it. and the thing thats so much more annoying is that the teacher this term doesnt even care about the quality of the points u make she just counts the number of times u talk which imo is really wrong and lazy. this rant has gotten way too long.

E block is spanish. this class is pretty light ngl and my teacher is like probably the most chill teacher in the entire school. idt ive ever voluntarily said a single thing the entire term and my participation grade is 91, which is probably like the lowest grade he gives. weve watched a few movies over the term which was fun.

F block is free, i usually go back to my dorm around this time since i have a 1.5 hour free block between E and G.

G block is pe soccer. the group of students in this class is kind of weird since half of them have like very little experience but then you also have people that got bored of being on the varsity soccer team and joined the pe. im kind of in the middle ig. this class is pretty fun imo.

during breaks in the morning i usually play various online games with friends.

lunch and dinner. imo the food at the dining hall is pretty decent. idt its as bad as most people say it is. anyway during lunch i do whatever. during dinner id usually groupsolve nyt crosswords with friends and other games as well.

i take piano lessons every thursday during F block. rn im learning rach op32/8 which is a nice piece.

i also started doing chamber music halfway through the term. im the piano accompaniment and were playing beethoven violin sonata 1 which is kind of easy but i still cant play it well cuz im mid.

after class on wednesday i have like a 5 hour free block but instead of being productive i usually just watch youtube and take a nap cuz im always too tired.

on wednesday nights i have problem selection meetings for emcc. its kind of boring but fun to go to since most of my friends are also on the problem selection committee.

math club is on sundays. its like pretty much the only club im in but its pretty fun. at the start of the term we did some olympiad stuff including a handout on realpoly and one on antiproblems. now were mostly just doing emcc stuff.

on the weekends we sometimes go to town to get dinner. the foods way better than dining hall food.

ive spent way too much time this term playing random video games. heres a few of them in roughly chronological order.
bomb party. fun word game. i played this a lot at mop.
geoguessr . i dont know any of the strats but its fun to play moving and then just look around for some random city name that i might recognize.
loopover . this is basically 2d rubiks cube. i played this for about a week then got a 10 second 5x5 time and got bored
slope. they updated slope fsr and now its harder. i played this for a while and got a 128 and stopped.
nyt crossword . i usually groupsolve this with a few others at dinner, our fastest time was a 3 minute monday.
pilfer. this is a really fun word game where u steal words by adding letters and rearranging them. senorsloth is a lot better than me at this though.
survev . this is a remake of surviv. its way too addicting . i should hop off survev
setwithfriends . this is like definitely the one ive played the most. i play this way too much. my pb rn is 51.21. before this term it was like 56 seconds or something. anyway its harder to play on the original website rn due to a certain reason but this website is clean.