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Friday, November 1, 2013
Puzzle: Time zones
Alice, who is in an Atlantic seaboard state (one of the states of the U.S., that is) is talking on the phone to Bob, who is in a Pacific seaboard state (again, one of the states of the U.S.). “What time is it there?”, Alice says. Bob gives the correct time where he is. “Funny, it's the same time here” says Alice. How is that possible?
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Answer)
- A small part of Oregon is on mountain time, and the Florida panhandle is on central time, just one hour off.
- But how can these two different time zones be on the same time? In the fall, when we switch back an hour, away from daylight saving time, the switch happens at 2 A.M. local time. So when it's 2 A.M. on switch day in the central zone, the time switches back to 1 A.M.. And it's still 1 A.M. in the mountain zone (since the zone won't fall back until 2 A.M. in mountain).
I originally saw this puzzle on
The Volokh Conspiracy, where it was posted on March 3rd, 2005 by Eugene Volokh. The puzzle is attributed to Warren Usui. The links to show the hint and answer no longer work in the original post, so I am re-posting the puzzle here. I have made a few minor changes in typography to conform to Fourmilab's style guide.
Posted at
14:18