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Many thanks to all the people who have sent me the official shortlist problems and solutions for various years.
The IMO has now become an elaborate business. Each country is free to propose problems. The problems proposed form the longlist. These days it is usually over a hundred problems. The Problems Selection Committee chooses a shortlist of around 20-30 problems from the longlist. Up until 1989 the longlist was made widely available, but from 1990 onwards it was not published, so that problems which did not make the shortlist remained confidential and could be used for other competitions. The Jury makes the final selection from the shortlist. This typically occurs in the few days before the papers are taken. The shortlist questions are not released until just after the following year's IMO, so that they can be used for training etc. [So the IMO 2003 shortlist questions will not be available until July 2004.] I now have a few early longlists, and I plan to put them on this site when I have got all the shortlists up.
The problems in this archive do not include shortlist problems which were actually used in the IMO. There are currently about 459 problems and 282 solutions in this archive. I have now got the official solutions for most of the years from 1983 onwards, and hope to put up the remaining solutions for these in due course.
Any help in finding the missing problems, 1971-80, would be gratefully received.
The book "300 defis mathematiques", by Mohammed Aassila, Ellipses 2001, ISBN 272980840X contains 300 shortlist problems with solutions (all in French). There are 3 problems before 1981, 5 from 1981 and the rest are from 1983 to 2000. There are none for 1986. For the other years there are between half and all the problems.
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John Scholes
jscholes@kalva.demon.co.uk
11 Oct 2002
Last corrected/updated 4 Dec 2003