Usually hot water does not freeze faster than cold water. The claim is called the Mpemba effect, and the best-known careful experiments have found that it is not a reliable rule under ordinary conditions.
The reason the story keeps coming back is that water is annoyingly complicated. Evaporation, convection, dissolved gases, supercooling, and the exact cooling setup can all change the result. If the containers, freezer, and starting conditions are not truly identical, the outcome can flip.
So the safe answer is: no, do not assume hot water freezes faster. Under special laboratory conditions, there can be exceptions and related effects, but that is not the same thing as a kitchen shortcut.
If you actually want ice faster, the easier win is to use a shallower container, colder starting water, and a freezer that is not crowded. That beats betting on a quirky effect that science still treats as conditional, not universal.
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