[mauriziocalo]

Related — these videos give a sense of how someone might actually go about thinking through and solving these kinds of problems:

- A 3Blue1Brown video on a particularly nice and unexpectedly difficult IMO problem (2011 IMO, Q2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M64HUIJFTZM

-- And another similar one (though technically Putnam, not IMO): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkmNXy7er84

- Timothy Gowers (Fields Medalist and IMO perfect scorer) solving this year’s IMO problems in “real time”:

-- Q1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G1nySyVs2w

-- Q4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-vp4zGzwIs

[nmca]

It takes Tim Gowers more than hour and a half to go through q4! (Sure, he could go faster without video. But Tim Gowers! An hour and a half!!)

[snewman]

For people who prefer reading to watching videos, I wrote a detailed account of my process for solving one of last year's IMO problems, along with thoughts on how this relates to AI:

https://secondthoughts.ai/p/solving-math-olympiad-problems