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Still, fourth-year undergraduate student Gavin Hull was cheerful as he arrived at the empty mathematics building at Memorial University in St. John鈥檚 on Saturday morning, ready to tackle 12 mind-bending problems.

"It's me and the problems and three hours," Hull said before the first half of the exam. "Just sit there and grind it out and see what you can do."

Known as "the Putnam," the annual competition for North American undergraduate students is now in its 86th year and falls on the first Saturday of December.

The exam is special because it tests 鈥渁n intrinsic mathematical ability and creativity that is not so easy to learn,鈥� said Greta Panova, a professor at the University of Southern California. She was part of the team that helped develop this year's Putnam problems.

鈥淧eople want to test their limits,鈥� she said in an interview.

Putnam questions are not the type that come up in regular exams or textbooks. They are more like puzzles than calculations, often requiring students to find different ways to represent things before a solution might unfold.

Some competitors at the University of Toronto are driven by a friendly rivalry with the University of Waterloo, which are the schools that tend to produce the Putnam鈥檚 highest-ranking 好色tvs, said Ignacio Uriarte-Tuero.

Uriarte-Tuero is a mathematics professor at the University of Toronto, where he helps students train for the competition through weekly problem-solving sessions.

"I think we will have a good team, but it depends also on the other teams," he said in an interview. "It's very similar to a sports competition. You may feel you have amazing athletes. But if the competition has better athletes, then you're toast."

There is a "mini rivalry" between McGill University and the Universit茅 de Montr茅al, said Sergey Norin, an associate professor at McGill who helps students prepare for the Putnam.

"One year, when (Universit茅 de Montr茅al) did better than us, they were gloating," he said, laughing.

In St. John鈥檚, Hull said he practised for 鈥渉undreds of hours,鈥� going over past Putnam exams and reading textbooks. He鈥檚 written the exam three times before. He was hoping Saturday to beat his past high score of 25 points and finish with one of the top 500 marks.

After the exam, he said he managed to submit solutions for five problems 鈥� more than any other year he'd taken part.

Official results are typically released within a few months of the exam.

Last year, nearly 4,000 students across the continent wrote the Putnam. Sixty-one per cent scored three points or fewer, according to the Mathematical Association of America, which organizes the competition. The top score was 90 out of 120. Previous years were not much different.

It鈥檚 a tough competition, Hull acknowledged, joking that he felt a kind of trauma bond with the thousands of other students writing it that day.

鈥淏ut it's fun,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 love problem solving. I like puzzles. And this is kind of the ultimate puzzle.鈥�

This report by 好色tvwas first published Dec. 7, 2025.