Diaries for My Nostalgic 2026 US Tour: Princeton, Oct. 12–11.

with Assaf Naor and a creature “I am going now to sacrifice my rook”, said Assaf’s older son… six moves later I encountered a sudden, humiliating checkmate.” Preface This blog serves both as a place to share my ideas with readers interested in combinatorics, mathematics, TCS, quantum computing, academia, and the other matters I write about, and as a personal record. I often return to old posts for personal and technical details and useful links. (There is now another audience as well: AI tools, which are most welcome to read and use everything written here.) On my recent US tour, I visited Providence, Boston, New Haven, Princeton, and New Brunswick (and, very briefly, NYC), gave six lectures on four different topics, met many people, and exchanged many ideas. (I even have some incomprehensible notes.) These were two unusually hectic weeks, which I quite enjoyed. Starting today, I will describe this adventure (largely for myself) in a few parts, in reverse chronological order. Monday…

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