Saturday, August 22, 2026

Sunken cost

When you don't realize a contest is ending and spends all your time grinding the last problem to seem cool...

See AMC10B 2025 #25 (spent last 4 minutes on it; posted the intended elegant solution on AoPSWiki first later, but this bragging did me no good when I missed cutoff by 1.5 points)

https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/2025_AMC_10B_Problems/Problem_25#Solution_2_(Trivial_Algebra)

See also https://johnzhou721.blogspot.com/2026/07/an-unusual-way-of-telescoping.html

See also how I wasted a lot of time perfecting the previous version of this blogpost about AMC 10B 2025 #25 and how much I grieved about not making AIME just to realize I was once again ruminating on a past situation, on something that seems elegant to write about but won't actually help me.

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