Sandy Wood
Brain Game: Two Minute Warning
by Sandy Wood - August 18, 2008 - 6:30 AM

bloghead_braingames.jpg

On the morning of September 1, Bill bought a fancy gold watch with diamonds all around it and an AM/PM indicator. At 1:00 that afternoon, he set the watch for exactly 1:00 PM. An hour later, he noticed that the watch was two minutes slow. After another hour, it had lost another two minutes. The watch looked so good on his wrist, though, that he didn’t want to take it off. “I’ll just wait,” he said. “It’ll show the correct time again one of these days.”

Without making any adjustments,
at what date & time would the watch
show the exact correct time again?

HERE is the answer.

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Comments (5)

  1. Got it right! Yeah!

    ReCaptcha: Kinslow attaining

    posted by Valerie on 8-18-2008 at 8:56 am

  2. But the date would be wrong, because your watch would have slowed down by a full day, therefore your watch would say Sept. 30. I wonder if you would ever get back around to the correct time AND date…

    posted by Scott on 8-18-2008 at 2:28 pm

  3. Of course, it doesn’t say the watch has a date indicator. I just figured a fancy gold watch with diamonds is bound to have that feature.

    posted by Scott on 8-18-2008 at 2:37 pm

  4. To answer Scott’s question I believe it would be August 25, 2038 at 1:00 pm (the watch would read August 25, 2037).

    You lose 1 day every 30 days, so you you would have to go through 365 30 day cycles (or 10,950 days) to get back to the same day. Assuming you begin on 9/1/08 at 1:00 pm you would end on 08/25/2038 at 1:00 pm.

    posted by jason on 8-18-2008 at 4:58 pm

  5. A twist: What if he bought it on October 15? (Or some other day such that you would have to consider daylight saving time.)

    posted by robin on 8-19-2008 at 2:03 am

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