Above: 1564 tigers can fit on the first floor of Nassau Hall.
Some redactions have been made, should be unredacted after Jan 16th 2026 (remind me if it is after Jan 16 and you see this).
On nov. 22 (approx 2 weeks ago), I went to PUMaC with some friends at my school (our school does not have an official team, we won’t talk about sad things here tho xD). The participants were me, LMY, WYT, KS, SMX, LYT, RET, PSA. A certain XDR was originally in our team but didn’t have time, rip.
The team name is worse walrus (the two objectively correct ways to pronouce whrhs).
Results are not out yet (noooooo, i’ll update this when it comes out i guess).
A chronology of what happened:
1 week before, power round is released. I kinda had the (correct) expectation that I’d be the only one who would be doing it, and after attempting a lecture this proved to be correct. The round was on ZFC set theory, and it was nice. I solved like most of the first 2 sections on basic set theory and ordinals, except for like 2 problems on well-ordering and one problem on ordinals (oop I should check solution later). Expect around 155 points. Was pretty fun, ngl.
Day of: I arrive around like 8:10, and PSA is already there lol. We wait until like 8:40 for the rest of the team to arrive (RET wins the lateness award for arriving before half of the team but finding us last). Our proctor D guides us into frist, and we chill for like 15 minutes before the start of individual rounds
By we chill, I mean like half of the people panic and try to memorize vietas, while the other half jokes about cheating :skull: “very funny” - D.
We take indivs round 1 (most people take alg, I took combi). Solved 5 on combi. Sillied problem 1, definitely, results haven’t come out yet tho. Don’t think I could’ve solved anything extra tho.
Then, break. And indivs round 2 (most people took geo, I took NT). Solved 4, again sillied problem 1. Also don’t think I could’ve solved anything extra.
Then team round. I kinda didn’t like this team round. Anyway I solve like 2, ish, perhaps, then idk how too solve anything else. I end up trying to bash a questoin for like 20 minutes, didn’t even finish. LMY also ended up bashing stuff. idk this team round was really really bad… probably one of my lowest points in comp math.
[redacted] above: live imagery of me selling on team round
So after discussing, I conclude that either WYT or I might’ve made indiv finals.
We walk over to campus center, then line up for like >30 minutes trying to get food. Then we eat outside, and go to mcdonnell. We played cards (i learned cambio yayy). Then, individual finals come out, nobody makes it :(. WYT and me are both think we could’ve made it, probably sillied way too much or smth.
Then, estimathon. We split up into two teams, “walrus” (me, PSA, RET, LMY) and “worse” (LYT, WYT, SMX, KS). The estimathon was scuffed as usual. walrus ends up like 4th (ahh probably my fault for sillying the last question), and worse ends up last :( oops, maybe drawing lots for teams isn’t the best idea for team balance.
Aside on estimathon strategy: our strategy that round was guess with 9.99x factor on everything. But some questions, our range wasn’t large enough so we had to use 3 guesses, after biting on the wrong direction. maybe it is worth just allocating 2 guesses with 99.99x factor, starting off, which might be nicer. idk. or just get gud ig. The winning team had like 1-3 factor guesses (?!?!?) on almost all 13 questions (?!?!), idk how that is possible.
Then we go on a small trip to get boba. We decide to run to get boba. KS and WYT run the whole way. RET, LYT, and I run segments, then wait for everyone else to catch up ish, then we continue sprinting. PSA claims to have to slow down for LMY that was funny.
We get boba, and play some games. I was playing tetr. Apparently there were princeton students watching and trying to guess what rank I was, lmao. probably thought I was F rank because I was mding all over the place.
Then we go walk through some of princeton. SMX goes to learn rubix cubing at jadwin, we look at the princeton art museum for funsies (tbh, the art is kinda mid ngl). Then we go back and play some 3-deck tractor in jadwin (wow i wonder why everyone i picked knows tractor). me, KS, SMX, and LMY pull a 光头, that was funny. Then SMX leaves, we play some shitler, and eat dinner at some random place, and leave.
Oh and while I was walking on a street to dinner, I saw some random lex kids, and asked, “hi, are any of you james wu”. With some luck, he is there, and we say hi. I hear a few orz’s LMAO.
And thus was probably the last math competition that I’ll attend, excluding the AMC/AIME series (I will take AIME, and probably not make AMO as usual). It was fun! too bad there aren’t many of these on the east coast.
One minor regret is that I didn’t really meet up with anyone (oop forgot to arrange this beforehand, and it was too late when I thought about it rip; plus, most of the people I know graduated…). Also forgot to take a group picture, big rip.
Thanks to my team for coming (tbh, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find a team at all), and PUMaC for the competition (I enjoyed the problems! or at least, a nontrivial subset of the problems!!! as a problemsetter, we all know that that’s all that matters)
above: some modern art from the princeton art museum, which had 21,763 visitors in its first 24 hours in 2025; photo credits: WYT
in reflection: left: me, probably. right: RET, probably; regrettably this is the closest thing to a team photo I can find
