A Friend's Text and the 'Unique Games' Conjecture

On the morning of September 11, 2026, Dor Minzer received a text from a friend asking whether he was close to settling one of the most famous open questions in theoretical computer science. Minzer is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leading expert on the 'unique games' conjecture. He initially thought it was a joke. That reflex is the part worth keeping. The person best placed to know treated the premise as implausible, which says something about the reputation of the problem even before anything is said about its status. It is also a reminder that in mathematics, 'famous open problem' and 'about to be settled' are very different phrases, and only one of them arrives by text message with a question mark attached.