Apparently the Putnam exam was given unofficially to Israelis, and both Ran and Ofer finished top 10 -- in their mid-teens. By way of contrast, my best finish was a little worse than 100th, when I was 14.
Ran was 3 years ahead of me, and pretty much the ideal roommate (my second semester; I invited him to swap rooms with a first semester roommate I didn't much get along with). No hassles about living conditions; some older-friend general advice; a lot of help studying for my qualifying exams.
Ran had a sadness about him due to political controversy -- he had gotten a special postponement of army duty due to his precociousness, he didn't want to go back to fulfil his commitment, and orthodox Jewish department chair Shlomo Sternberg pretty much expelled him (albeit with a PhD) in retaliation.
Of course, a much greater sadness later occurred in Ran's life, as his ex-wife killed their child in a murder-suicide. :(
Ofer was a stereotypical geek; Ran was a more socially adept guy, with girlfriends and so on. Not coincidentally, he spoke the much better English of the two.
If we had a hierarchy of who was quickest and smartest in the department, the top two were generally thought of as Ofer and Angelos Tsiromokos. In reality, Don Coppersmith was right up there as well. Angelos of course is the one who never got his PhD, instead going off to be a translator for the Common Market/EU. But then, he could beat me at Scrabble, despite English being his third language.
(On the other hand, Daniel Pipes, who briefly lived in my dorm, didn't take kindly when a math guy -- me -- took him down at a word game. :) )
Ran told me of a multi-day conversation in which guys progressed through the natural numbers, coming up with an interesting mathematical question to which the number was the answer. I think they got stuck at 93 or so.
When we were in the common room, it somehow came up in conversation that Jacobi was Jewish. I immediately said "Oh, THAT'S Jacobi's identity!" Angelos literally fell out of his chair laughing.
(Every time I stumbled upon an "unproved theorem of Gabber" in a paper, I would take a screenshot and throw it into a folder.)