Brainteaser: Two Clocks

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Mr. Tidball purchased two clocks from Gordo's Repair Shop and set them at the same time. He soon discovered, however, that one clock was two minutes slow per hour and the other one was one minute fast per hour. The next time Tidball looked, one clock was exactly an hour ahead of the other. How long had it been since he last set the clocks?

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This brainteaser was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

It depends on how many hours had passed between when he set them and when he had first discovered the issue. 1 hour? Then the clocks were already 3 minutes apart.

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right, but the question was how long had passed between when he set them and when he saw they were an hour apart. Doesn't matter when he discovered the issue - the time between setting them correctly and having them one hour apart is 20 hrs.

That being said, an argument could be made for 260 hrs :)

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