The modern term for hot water freezing faster than cold water is the Mpemba effect, named after Erasto Mpemba, a Tanzanian teenager who, along with the physicist Denis Osborne, conducted the first systematic, scientific studies of it in the 1960s. https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-hot-water-freeze-faster-than-cold-physicists-keep-asking-20220629/
@estherschindler the way I visualize why this works is this. Think of a cliff. You throw a rock(a) from the top, and you throw a rock(b)from the middle when (a) passes. Rock(a) surpasses rock(b) to the bottom because it's already accelerated to speed.
I know this isn't technically what happens, but it's how my brain makes sense of it.