A Simple Riddle Is Confusing The Internet
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- What's the closest time to midnight? In this video I explain the correct answer to the puzzle that is going viral and causing a lot of arguments.
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This is the dumbest one yet. It’s genuinely upsetting how many people were challenged by this…
I had to read it four times to try and see where the trick was. It’s so straight forward I’m shocked how people don’t get it.
Time moves forward. It's hard for some people to think of something as close when it's a long distance away from the next time it happens.
The only thing I can think of is the 12 hour clock being unintuitive to those who use 24 hour. Even then, I feel like it shouldn’t be that difficult.
It's a children's math question, it make sense why this question exist
@@acmhfmggru There's no ambiguity in "closest to midnight," lol. Just as there's no ambiguity in "closest to one dollar." If the choices were similar (40 cents, 45 cents, $1.03 & $1.06) would there be a problem selecting the correct answer? I think 'production line thinkers' would probably be the ones to have difficulty with this question. But to me this is very straightforward & easily solved. I'm with you .. duped. 😅
The hardest part about this was second guessing myself because I was confused how someone could possibly get this wrong. Even had to double check that 12 am is midnight
@Lily-ui3kk
Yup, me too. After choosing the correct answer immediately, I spent some time wondering what the trick was (old lady who was never very proficient in or confident with mathematics) I can only guess that people no longer know the difference between a.m. and p.m.
I think people had trouble cause they were using the Price is Right rule of "closest without going over".
Same. 12:03 seemed obvious, which made me wonder if I was missing something.
After Midnight , Past Morning...
A perfect example of how mathematics for kids has turned into reading comprehension
turned into? Math always had reading comprehension.
Yes, it’s always been that way, remember story problems
Math in real life doesn't write the problem out for you. Reasoning will always involve words.
Good point. With lots of problems you really have to ask what is being tested.
There's requiring to understand what's being asked, and then there's deliberate masking to make it harder to understand. I can understand the first one, but second one not so much.
This wasn't a problem of semantics confusing grown-ups, they literally can't tell the time.
Agreed. I solved this in my head just looking at it without needing the clock.
even if it was pm for the 11:55 and 11:50 answer still 12:03 am was closest
@@kadlifal The thing is if it was pm for 12:06 and 12:03, then 11:50 AM is the closest
@@lucykitsune4619 ik
What if the problem is re-phrased as: Assuming each answer represents the current time in their respective time zone, which one of (the answers) reaches midnight first? Will the answer be the same? Now can anyone see the ambiguity there? The problem here, is that time is linear, so when you say, closest to midnight, there are different interpretations.
24-hour clock is superior
💯
Don't experience much about 12 clock format, but still used that unconsciously
Correct.
No
Entirely.
Lets us even consider the fact that people confuse 11:55AM and 11:50 AM with PM, shouldn't they be 5 and 10 minutes, respectively, away from midnight. So, even in that case 12:03 is the closest time.
well, when you confuse am and pm so that every of these options fall around noon, you get 11:50 furthest from noon and therefore closest to midnight.
that‘s why I don‘t know what actually caused the confusion to the alleged ones
@@fallen-il8zeyou are right. It’s simple and straightforward. Don’t really understand why it caused confusion
12:XY am can't be a thing... This hour doesn't exist. It's like saying '45th of july' (for August 15th).
@@brunothiagorvs so what do you call, say 12 minutes past midnight?
The fact that this stumped and made adult's head hurt makes me not look forward to the future....
The fact that this stumped and made adult's head hurt made my head hurt.
as someone who lives in a country that usually counts in 24h clock, idk how adults can't think of how "a bit more than 12am" is close to midnight, but 11:55 am is like 12h after midnight...
I am not even sure how the 12h clock works (if it's considered 00:03 or 12:03 am/pm when you read it) but yeah...
Brasileira? Olá, acho que tem poucos brasileiros aqui nesse canal
I'm not sure if you're asking but yeah, 00:03 would be 12:03 am. 00:59 would be 12:59 am. 01:00 would be 1:00am
@@SparrowKnightx 12 am coming before 1 am and 12 pm coming before 1 pm is such a confusing and weird design, i understand some countries don't use 24h clock and it's a okay but i will never understand why they chose to do it like this
This one isn't even obscure or misleading. This is painfully common knowledge, but I guess it's not so common, just like most people apparently can't point out any country but their own on a map. I'm sure plenty can't even do that.
Natylsabella.... as a European, I had exactly the same thoughts as you.
This was for me more a language riddle.
Seeing that after 11 pm comes 12 am and then 1 am, makes me happy we have a 24-hour clock in use.
Same here. This am/pm thing is completely unnecessary. The 24h system is superior.
Same, I never understand why did they think 1 am comes after 12 pm, and 1 pm comes after 12 am
The year is 4587. Archeologists dig through rare surviving digital files from 21st Century. This is the only video of Presh they ever find, and he goes down in History as the greatest matematician of our era.
It’s absolutely shocking that people found it challenging.
I am not shocked by anything in this Clown World we live in.
For my european mind, the issue is that the US-american 24-hour-clock is a bit counter-intuitive. I mean, who would have guessed that the AM-sequence would start with 12, then 1, 2 ... 10, 11, then the PM sequence starts with 12, 1, 2 ... 10, 11. This way, 11 AM and 12 AM are not one hour apart, but eleven, and thus on opposite sides of the day.
It might be normal for someone who grew up with this, but for someone with english as second language, this is indeed rather challenging.
Its because its based on perspective
@@ml09394There is no perspective here. Just understanding of the clock. That's it.
@@dorderre The 24 hour clock is the same the world over, he merely superimposed a 12 hr. clock over the 24 hr. clock.
Due to the nature of language and our current knowledge of physics this question has 2 correct answers. This solution given here is based on an assumption that is not stated in the question. At 12:03am it will take someone 23 hours and 57 minutes to reach midnight. At 11:55 am it will take someone 12 hours and 5 minutes to reach midnight. As 12 hours and 5 minutes is less time than 23 hours and 57 minutes it is closer to midnight assuming we can't travel backwards through time. And that's the answer.
Even if you want to say "but time is one way only tho", the question gives you the time. Start at 12:00am. 12:03am is 3 minutes away, 11:55am is 11 hours and 55 minutes away...
Wrong. The closest time to midnight, not closest time to the next midnight.
@@yackawaytube To do that you have to be able to time travel. So unless you can do that you are wrong!
@@proffessorclueless No, think of it like gas stations on a one way road. You pass one, it is .5 km back. There is another one 15 km down the road. The nearest one is still the one behind you, even if you cannot go back to it. 12:03am is a net 3 minutes away from midnight, even if you can't go back to midnight.
@@paladin181 Distance can be measured with or without direction but time cannot assuming as I have already stated you cannot travel back in time. You are making the assumption that the word nearest has the same meaning when referring to distance as it does when referring to time. We can alter course in spacetime to return to a location in space but we cannot alter course to return to a location in space/time.
The answer seemed pretty obvious, 12:03 a.m, since it's just 3 minutes away from midnight which is least amongst the options, I couldn't understand what was the trick or riddle behind this?
Cuz evryone exept americs uses 24h clock instad of pm am and 12 is 12 not 00:00 witch is midnight and some americans get confused if midnight is pm or am
I don't think it's the am/pm thing because if you truly want to confuse people with am/pm, you'd have to use 12:00 am/pm sharp, any 1 minute more or less will be much much less confusing. It really should be the reachable or unreachable midnight, or the definition of this "closest". I can argue, because, 12:03 am is already passed the midnight, that certain midnight is already infinitely far away from us because we can Never reach them, at least in this universe we can't. Unless a time machine of course😁
Yeah, the only confusion comes from thinking it was about 'the next midnight', but even if that was it... I'm not sure why it would make anyone head hurt... It'd just be "Oh you're right, I misread, then it's 12:03".
Yeah I don’t see the problem either. This is just as sad as people not able to read analog clocks. 12P is noon. 12A is midnight. It’s 12A + 3mins, or 12A + 6mins. Don’t even need to know 12A = 00:00.
@@NanaNanaque Nobody uses the 24 hour clock in Canada either.
The whole problem arises from stubborn refusal to use the 24-hour format for telling time.
No it doesn't. I really don't think that's the confusion at all. The confusion is about whether "closest to midnight" means literally the smallest difference in time between midnight and the stated times, or whether it means the amount of time between the stated time and the next midnight that will occur. That ambiguity would remain regardless of using 24-hour time or not
@@olanmills64This.
@@olanmills64no it wouldnt
Sorry but I can tell time both at 12 and 24
@@olanmills64 It could lead to confusion if you don't know that 12am is 24:00 (midnight, not noon), and that noon is actually 12pm
This is more an English question than a Maths question. The convention of how 12am and 12pm work is a convention linked to the language.
no it isn't
This has nothing to do with English. AM and PM come from Latin.
@@EaglePicking But they have been adopted by English, not by Mathematics.
Surely then it's more of a Latin problem?
@@marcwilliams9824 No, because AM and PM are actually part of the English language - you don't need to understand their Latin roots to use the terms correctly.
If you ask the question: Which is closer to Christmas: February or October, many people will say October, because they see time as only flowing forward. So it's more a question about how to interpret 'closer to' in regards to time. If you understand it in the sense of 'least time to wait until', the mistake is understandable. Buy that doesn't mean they are bad at math or can't read a clock.
But it didn't say, "least time to wait until"... simple logic in my opinion solved it correctly.
@@Supertrack238 time only moves in one direction. Once you've passed something, you're not close to it anymore. It's gone, never to be seen again. When are you closest to eating dinner if dinner is at 7pm every night? At 1930 or at 0730?
@@WMartinNI I think it is semantical, at best. We are both entitled to our own opinions. Best to you.
@@WMartinNI 19:30 because 19:30 is 30 minutes apart from the dinner time
@@WMartinNI Who is closer to 70 years old? Sally who is 2 years old or Bob who is 71 years old?
This is one of those posts where I would love to know WHY it was confusing to so many people. He mentions in the video that the problem doesn't state to take into consideration that time is linear so I assume that is the mistake most people were making. Thinking along the lines that you can't ever go back to the previous midnight so 11:55am would be the closest to the NEXT midnight. Overthinking?
The only other mistake I could see is people thinking that midnight is 12 PM which would then make 11:50am the closest. And that may be a common mistake, since I suspect many people would think that 12pm would follow 11pm. It would probably make more sense if we referred to the hour between 12am and 1pm as 0am much as the 24 hour clock does.
I’m using 24h clock. For me, 12:06 a.m. meant 6 minutes after noon
Also, most people can understand that 2 a.m. is closer to midnight than 1 a.m. the same way that we will say to a kid that april is closer to christmas then february (because the kid probably meant the *next* christmas). So i was almost guessing if i had to say febraury or april
Like most viral "math" puzzles, its not really maths (like here if you understood the closest meant the one that will reach midnight first or if you don’t know what 12:03 a.m. meant exactly, then you are screwed even tho you did the math part correctly. I answered 11:50 a.m. because i’m not familiar to a.m. and p.m.)
@@quentind1924 Since the problem was presented in 12 hour format, I assume it was intended for an audience that is also familiar with that format. I can understand this being confusing if you are not familiar with the 12 hr clock. Since 12:00am is 1 minute past 11:59pm, 12:03am is just 3 minutes away from midnight and is "closest". Whether "closest" means only looking forward or not is an issue of semantics. Your example of Christmas makes sense but what if I asked you to perform a task "as close to midnight as possible each night"? In that case if these were the choices, 12:03am would be correct.
@@ShawnOBrian Ofc if you change the wording the ambiguity disappear. Yes, if you explain your definition of "closest" before asking the question, there isn’t the problem, but it was not the case for this problem, so both answer could be valid
And technically, if the task you are supposed to do is to say "last message of the day" on a discord server, then you failed miserably if you post it right after midnight. So even there, depending on the task there could be abmiguity (but i agree that most of the times doing it right after midnight is very good, but i’m saying that without the full context, you can’t know if right after midnight is good or not. Same if you say "happy new year !" right before midnight. So again, you need more context)
@@quentind1924 Agreed. Poorly worded question but I do think the video is correct as far as the best answer goes.
@@ShawnOBrian I agree that the solution on the video is correct. However i don’t agree for the title and everyone saying how easy it is, when they clearly didn’t took into consideration that maybe closest could mean closest to the next midnight and when we are tolding to them that there was this, they deny the fact that it could be confusing
This was the easiest problem I have ever seen 😂
Those folks stumped by this must have been sweating harder than Michael Scarn in Threat Level: Midnight
Those folks should learn how to do the Scarn... maybe it'll help them manage their stress!
This is sad that it made people’s head hurt. How? People need to stop overthinking these things.
I would argue that they're under thinking it... People automatically apply everyday life to the question and assume that once they pass a time it is automatically 23 hours and 59 minutes away and therefore anytime just past midnight would be far from the next midnight. Never mind that's not what the question is asking. Closest means closest.... But when you start talking about time people have a hard time getting past the fact closest and next occurring are not the same thing.
Which parent were confused by this?!! This is a grade 1 or 2 question. In Australia we don’t use the 24hr clock - but this question still wouldn’t confuse anyone. It’s just getting kids used to the concept of am and pm
well because the specifics of noon and midnight being PM or AM and other stuff with time isn't unified, and even it was, it's still a easily confused topic
@@aguyontheinternet8436 it’s really not - no adult should be confused between midday and midnight
@@aguyontheinternet8436 it is unified though, there are 2 fixed systems, the better one with the 24h clock which is easily understandable and clear to everyone and the AM/PM one. The only to know about it is that AM and PM stands for ante meridiem and post meridiem meaning before and after noon respectively. If you know that you automatically know that 11AM is just before noon. How they came up with 12AM for midnight is a mystery to me though.
@@Ineddiblehulk Before this video i didn't know if midnight was 12 am or 12 pm because i use the 24h clock system
@@Airton2 ok
Handwaving away that the transition from 11am, 12pm, 1pm and 11pm, 12am, 1am don't actually make sense.
"12 is the first hour of the half day, followed by 1"
It would be better if we called midnight and noon 0am and 0pm respectively , but humans be humans.
i like helicopters
This was so simple for me to answer.I didn't need to even need but a few seconds before knowing the answer.
It's not challenging, it's just an ambiguous question. It's A if it means next midnight, D if it means any midnight.
For those who grew up using analog watches/clocks and with military background, this was a quick puzzle to solve. Those who only grew up using digital watches/clocks it may have taken some thought. Thanks for sharing.
Seeing as all the times were specified with numerals, how would knowledge of analogue clocks help?
Seeing as all the times were specified in 12hr format, how would knowledge of the 24h clock help?
Those who grew up with analog clock but without am/pm solved this problem in 2 seconds, but wrongly, because they thought the am/pm system made sense, but it doesn't
“When you’re ready, keep watching to learn how to solve this.. *sighs in despair for humanity*.. problem..
Are you serious?
Got the image as a notification, and thought I must be missing something to the context of the question. Nah, guess adults just be out here not solving questions for kids
I answered A.. because the question is "to midnight". Clock doesnt move backwards
Closest isn't about the direction of time, it's about the amount of time. 3 minutes difference makes it the closest.
@@K1ngNazSports Like I wrote. It's about amount and the word closest.
@@K1ngNazSportsIf you are 1 mile past City A and 80 miles away from the next city, City B, which city are you closest to?
@@Adventurer-te8fl The wording of the question is what makes it confusing. The answer to your question would be City A. If the question was “Which next city are you closest to” then it would be City B
@@K1ngNazSports What's confusing about the wording? Because the average joe would immediately say City A as this is a very normal question, just like anyone asking what's the closest 5 star restaurant to where they live regardless of the forward or backward direction.
"Which next city are you closest to" is confusing because what does it mean for a city to be "next"? Also the question asked in this video didn't use "next".
Sorry, is this a joke? If not, time to find out whether there is lead in the water.
Its murica, of course there is lead in the water, its a calorie free sweetener
Ask people in Flint...
It's all the plastics
Nice to hear the almost imperceptible air quotes around ‘problem’!! 😂😂
As someone who usually use 24h format, I got it wrong because I thought 12:00 am was right after 11:59 am, so midday, and midnight was 12:00 pm. Anyway, it just seems weird to me to say 12:03 am instead of 00:03 am, same with 12:03 pm instead of 00:03 pm when using the 12h format (I'm not saying you shouldn't do this, I just say I'm confused with this format).
+1
Why do you use a 24 hour format? The only people who do that are in the military.
@@adamcarter6862 A lot of country use the 24 hours format. I live in France, where most people use 24 hours, though some use the 12 hours format.
@@Nathan_Avril Thank you for your reply. I had never heard of anywhere that uses a 24 hour clock. I wonder why France would have that as their way of telling time?
If you think about the meaning of "am" and "pm" and apply this meaning strictly, then both 12 am and 12 pm should be midnight.
"am" means "ante meridiem" or in English "before noon". The only 12:00 that is before noon is midnight.
"pm" means "post meridiem", or "after noon". The only 12:00 that is after noon is midnight also.
That's why we shouldn't use 12:00 am or 12:00 pm, just 12:00 noon and 12:00 midnight.
This is definition dependent. If by close it is meant just plain time either way, that is elapsed or forward has not occurred yet then one answer is correct. If it is defined as the least amount of time remaining until the next midnight, then a different answer is correct. I agree with MrMalort that this is a reading comprehension test not a math test.
Even if the 11:-- times were pm, the answer was be the same...
Bruuhhh this was in the ministry exam of Egypt 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
i kept looking for a trick or twist. none found and my head doesn't hurt :-)
For those that don't understand the confusion, a non-trivial number of people assume 12pm follows 11pm and 12 am follows 11 am, which is wrong. Honestly i didn't know, I use 24 hr clocks and couldn't remember grade school as nobody i talk to uses "am" or "pm" rather "morning" and "evening/night", in this way "12 at night" and "12 in the morning" are both common to mean 12 am
Yeah, but I'd call it defined wrong.
Counting beyond 12 hours in a 12 hour clock and still changing am to pm and vice versa is weird.
In an old fashioned clock you have no 0, so it explains why they didn't use 0:01 which would be most consistent. But using 12:01 you'd need to keep the am and pm consistent.
Which morons decided this I wonder?
@@teambellavsteamalice , as you pointed out, the original layout of clocks (aka sundials) did not have 0. They tracked the sun across 12 hours on a circle (and these "morons" would be called Egyptians). This structure has been maintained well after it stopped making sense to use it. Technically, there was no such thing as 12am or 12pm, because am and pm refer to times before midday and after midday, respectively. 12 midnight and 12 noon shouldn't be referred to using am and pm, but, because 12:01am and 12:01pm are legitimately labelled, those associated labels stuck for the midnight/midday times as well.
@@SgtSupaman
I'm talking about mislabeling am and pm for that hour after midday/midnight, it's bonkers. Whoever decided to go along with that are morons.
Who uses a 24 hour clock? Are you in the military? Or is there a country where they don't use A.M. and P.M?
@@adamcarter6862
I'm from the Netherlands, we don't use am and pm, all digital clocks are 24 hour ones.
When I saw the times I figured it was going to be some ambiguity of the term "closest" between next vs. nearest.
Yes, I was thinking the same. Because you can't go backwards in time so the "closest" may imply the midnight that you can reach.
There is no ambiguity. Just don't read words into the question that are not there.
@@l.w.paradis2108 there IS ambiguity though. What's the definition of "closest"? Question writer doesn't give one - therefore "closest" is ambiguous. In their language or mother tongue it may not be ambiguous but that information hasn't been shared - therefore the question is ambiguous! Other people than me have found the same ambiguity so it's not uncommon. The fact that YOU can't see it says more about you than everyone else.
@fifiwoof1969 Okay it does. I'm a Bad Person.
@@fifiwoof1969 In math, "closest" is absolute value.
It is a question of standard used: in France (and many other countries), globally we use the 0-24h system. 12am does not exist, it is 0, and 12pm is our 12 before the afternoon, so it is more am than pm! So as a french, it is not so easy to answer the question. For instance, during one if my 1st trip to the US, I was completely confused due to jetlag and in my first night I saw 12 am on the alarm clock and woke up immediately thinking it was midday but everything was dark outside! I was completely lost 😂.
Let me present an alternative problem.
I have a time machine with 4 buttons: a, b, c and d. These buttons correspond to the 4 options of the original problem, and transport you to that precise time of day. You're an astronomer, who wants to observe a phenomenon which takes place exactly at midnight every night, and you ask me to help you. I tell you that I can't take you to midnight specifically, because the machine only has 4 buttons. You reply "then take me to whatever's closest".
Which button do you think I should press?
This word problem specifies the next midnight though. The one in the video made no such designation.
BUT..... If we look at the details, it asked "what is the closest time to midnight" and the answer would be 11:59pm or 12:01am..... If we are supposed to pick one of the 4 choices, it needs to say "WHICH is the closest time to midnight.
What if the problem is re-phrased as: Assuming each answer represents the current time in their respective time zone, which one of (the answers) reaches midnight first? Will the answer be the same? Now can anyone see the ambiguity there? The problem here, is that time is linear, so when you say, closest to midnight, there are different interpretations.
Don't make it confusing.
Sometimes you just have to simplify things in life.
Also the the answer to your question is 11:55 AM is the closest to next midnight. If you mean previous midnight that would be 12:03 AM
There's no ambiguity. Even if you put timezones, at least for standard timezone that is.
I think people are getting hung up and tripped on the word “to” in the question, and perhaps using the implication that “to midnight” means time going forward linearly, not backwards and thus picking 11:55 am. The ambiguity of the question is what is causing the confusion.
Even if the other 2 at 11:xx had been PM, the closest to midnight would still have been 12:03
But if instead the 12:xx had been PM then 12:03 suddenly wouldn't be closest.
The fact that people were really confused with this made me lose the last trace of hope in humankind I had in my heart.
bro same💀💀
The question is wrong for using am and pm if its over 12 hours then u don't need it
you could also be confused by 12am = midnight (00:00), but well, this might've been directed to people who use 12h clocks
The argument for A is also very good -- time only goes forwards. If you want to perform some action at midnight then 12:03 am is too late.
In a similar fashion, i believe that October is closer to Christmas than February. If you agree with this then you should also agree that 11:55 am is closest to midnight.
This gives people two good answers to debate about and explains why the question went so viral.
So if your doctor tells you to take your medicine as close to midnight as possible, around midday would be better than 3 minutes past midnight?
@@JaniLaaksonen91that's a lot of damage. 😂
@@JaniLaaksonen91 depends on the definition of "closer" - when don't know the definition of the person (or AI bot) who wrote the question. But I can guess what your doctor's is given the rest of the wording you provide. It's wrong to just assume a definition by the question writer as you've done here.
@@fifiwoof1969 Oxford dictionary definition of close: "only a short distance away or apart in space or time." Where in there do you find anything about direction of time or the relevance of order of events. It was a childrens math test, not a university level philosophy exam.
@@JaniLaaksonen91 As someone who works in health care I can tell you with confidence that there is a significant portion of the population that would wait until the next midnight to take their medication if they missed it by 5 minutes...
How in the world is anyone confused by this? I'm embarrassed to be a part of the same species as some people.
How are adults confused by this question?
Because the naming convention does not make sense in the first place, so people who think are at a disadvantage.
First, "closest" is not defined. If a kid asks you what’s the closest to christmas between febraury and april, would you confidently answer febraury ?
And if you are using 24 hour clocks and don’t know that 12:00 a.m. is midnight, then you can’t get the correct answer (11:59 a.m. is 11h and 59 minutes after midnight, so why would 12:00 a.m. be midnight ?)
Lol … both replies get a fave.
Because we know time never goes backwards
@@17PAT17 It doesn't matter if time doesn't go backwards. The question was which time is closest. 3 minutes is the closest, it's not hard.
Excusez moi ? Well at least I'm happy that I could solve a riddle on this channel for the first time 😂
Excused.
24-hour format rules all.
This AM/PM system is very strange. The normal 24-hour system ends at midnight, when the time jumps from 23:59 to 00:00, so there is nothing illogical like 24:03, but 00:03. As a European, I wouldn't have guessed this question either. It would be much more logical if, even in the 12-hour system, 00:00 was always at the end of the cycle.
The issue is that despite not jumping from 11:59 to 0:00 it still switches from PM to AM. This results in a situation where 12 AM comes before 1 AM. And this is where, at least to me, it becomes really illogical.
To be honest, I got the problem wrong because time is linear and only goes in one direction. Hence, 12:03 AM is almost 24 hours away from midnight as opposed to 11:55 PM which is 12 hours away. I know I made the problem more complicated than intended.
I was baffled when looking at the thumbnail why this would be confusing. Now I'm sad and angry that people find this confusing.
What's the confusing part? I feel like I've been clickbaited
the 12 hour format is the confusing part
I read the question differently. Just read the time out loud: 12:05am is “five minutes PAST midnight”, while 11:55pm reads “five minutes TO midnight”.
Besides the wording of the question, we can also take time to flows only in one direction, so the “midnight” that we just passed doesn’t count unless you specifically say it does.
picked the answer A.
I knew I would see the day I would encounter a problem on this channel that I could actually solve, even if it was a question aimed at kids. This isn't really a riddle. People say "12 at night" when they refer to 12AM, and also we associate night/evening with PM and morning with AM, but "midnight" is pretty clear-cut. I was very surprised to see such a straightforward question on here compared to most of the problems/riddles that are usually analysed.
If you hadn’t told me the question was difficult, I wouldn’t have been even slightly confused.
There is still a huge flaw with this question, in that even if you mistake 11 am for 11 pm, and take the absolute value of the minutes to midnight (so A becomes 5, B becomes 6, C becomes 10, and D becomes 3), then D *is still the closest.* This could have been easily been fixed if one of the answers was 11:59 AM.
Why is it a flaw?
By the way, in the video question, if one mistakes 12 pm for midnight, then 11:50 am becomes the closest to midnight.
Yep, makes no sense how ppl will still get this wrong.
Though there are variations of this problem which would change the correct answer.
First is changing the times from a.m to p.m, where A - 11.55pm becomes closest to midnight
Second is removing the a.m part from all the times and showing those times in 24h format, where C - 11.50 becomes closest to midnight
Yeah much better. Still too easy but much better.
I get where 12:00am versus 12:00pm are confusing, but the question doesn't use those, so no need to get tripped up there.
That said, I wholeheartedly think the answer does require a linear understanding of time and therefore A is correct.
When I used to help assemble math test for elementary school and we would get a question like this. We would debate it and then throw it out because if four people with advanced degrees are confused what about a 10 year old?
I spent half my time trying to figure out what the Gotcha part was.
There wasn't one. Sometimes things are exactly what they appear to be. I'm not sure why this was stumping people out in the real world.
There's an easy answer to this, Mark. It's because the education system is failing kids.
So……….why is this making adult heads hurt again?
They read words into the question that are not there?
interpretation
Hey PRESH super easy & I am not exactly a young kid. I figured out D) 12:03 in a couple of seconds but I find the more things you grew up with going back in time helped immensely in solving these particular questions and also knowing information such as 2400 (military time) clock hours is a huge plus. I myself have a talent in singing but in school I super excelled @ Spelling (always 100%) & Grammar.
This is one of the things we learn in English class as a non-english speaker
The word "To" is what confused me about the question. B and D are both times past midnight, A and C are the only times to or towards midnight
Did it really stump people? I find it hard adults didn't get this
I can perhaps shed a little light on this. I am a math professor at a small Catholic college in upstate New York. Many years ago around Easter, the College was running a contest to see who could guess the number of jelly beans in a large glass jar. I submitted my guess and when the results were posted saw that my guess was within 5 of the correct number with the next nearest guesses all off by 50 or more. However, I did not win the contest. Of course, I didn't really care, but when I brought up the fact that my guess was within 5 and the next nearest (which won) was over 50 off, I was told by a vey stern nun that my guess had gone over and that the definition of "close" did not include "going over." I strongly suspect that this is a generational understanding of what "close" means--and that this explains the confusion.
I'm not sure how anyone who knows what midnight means can get stumped at this
What's the definition of closest from the person (or AI bot) who wrote the question?
Don't know? Me neither! Insufficient information to answer the question.
@@fifiwoof1969 what's difficult to understand about the word? Closest means as close to midnight (12 am) as possible, from either ends (before 12am and after 12am)
Where does AI even come into this
@@blackpurple9163 I've seen "closest" mean next. What definition does the writer of the question use?
Can't tell me?
Oh dear!
AI bot could've written the question. Can you show it was written by a human?
You can't?
Oh dear!
@@fifiwoof1969 your responses are like a bot tho😆
And closest only means next when written as "next closest" or there's nothing before the initial value
Btw why are you so obsessed with AI bots, why does it matter if the question was written by a human or a bot, I see you just don't want to accept you didn't reach the correct conclusion and are now blaming it on the phrasing of the question, I'm not even a native english speaker, nor am I fluent in it, I might just be an intermediate, but still the question is phrased correctly and there's nothing "tricky" about it's construction
@@blackpurple9163 in my life I've read, heard and seen others interpret closest as next closest. Some of them are on here and I don't believe any of them are wrong.
Would you be willing to let an impartial court decide the issue? If not then your head is buried in the sand like a MAGA republican.
Edit: I got the right answer (according to Presh) but in his video he assumed the interpretation of "closest".
Miss that bit? That's your problem, not mine.
:-)
Step 1: Create a complicated clock system.
Step 2: Make a simple riddle from it.
or
Use a logical 24-hour clock system and there are no questions and no riddles.
I have seen post about this and it is seriously unreal how many couldn't figure it out or just plain got the wrong answer, people even arguing over the wording...SMH.
Well, the wording is the issue more than anything else.
The only confusing thing here is that how do you not laugh solving this 😂😂😂😂😂
I have no idea how anybody found that difficult!
Isn’t the answer A because of how the question is worded. What is the closet time to midnight?
Here the answers for people that are not familiar with the 12-hour clock 😂
A: 11:55
B: 00:06
C: 11:50
D: 00:03
Exactly as it SHOULD have been written. am and pm are not used for 24 hour time clock.
@@philipcousins548that still doesnt change the ambiguity of the question.
The confusion for most people is that time NEVER goes backwards only forwards. So they end up discounting 12:06 and 12:03 because it's past midnight. If we were to use the question you said "the next midnight" that would imply tomorrow's midnight.
But day time isn’t close to midnight. It has to be nighttime to be close to midnight.
it's like saying if Jack is 51 and Joe is 2 then Joe is closer to 50 because jack can't go back in age
According to Wiki 12am for midnight and 12pm for noon are more common than the reverse, but not universal. I've always thought it was illogical to go from 11pm to 12am, surely midnight is 12 hours after noon (post meridiem) so it ought to be 12pm. Doesn't affect the puzzle of course.
Since 12.00 in the cases of both noon and midnight is the meridian, neither can be either post (after the) meridian (p.m.) or ante (before the) meridian (a.m).
Accordingly, both 12 p.m and 12 a.m. are nonsense: the only correct designations are either 12 noon or 12 midday, or 12 midnight.
@@rogerdines6244 No, meridian is literally the middle of the day i.e. noon. From Latin, originally medidies, then meridies, meridianes (Chambers dictionary).
@@pwmiles56thank you for resurrecting my 60 year-old Latin! Let us at least agree that talking of noon as either post or ante meridiem is nonsense, since it is the meridien: that means that midnight is both 12 hours after the previous meridien and 12 hours before the next: i.e. depending which way you are going, it is both a.m and p.m.: I still say it is better to call the meridien either noon or midday, and 12 hours after that midnight, or, probably better, use the 24 hour clock.
@@a-_-aThe only correct answer
@@a-_-a They do exactly this in Japan (according to wiki)
It may be confusing because of the AM/PM, but even if we ignore it and convert wrongly, the answer is still D, because the distance is still greater from the o'clock (-10, +6, -5, +3)
Correct. Since the question doesn't state what midnight we are talking about we must pick the closest midnight.
I think the problem lies in the fact that in a 12 hour clock, it goes 11 and then 12, even though it switches between am and pm there isn’t a reset until 12:59 then 1:00
That whole am/pm thing is just insane(ly confusing).
And that damn American date format (month, day, year) is insane too.
The month day year is based on how you speak the date. In the US, generally you would say it's June 11th, not the 11th of June unless its a formal event or I see it that way in legal documents a lot.
someone explain please why does it go 11 pm - 12 am - 1 am, and not 11 pm - 12 pm - 1 am???
@@daseinbot it's down to what AM and PM are acronyms for: ante meridiem, and post meridiem, referring to whether it's before or after the time when the sun is directly overhead (noon). The exact moment of 12:00:00 pm is AT noon, and the remainder of the hour is AFTER noon, at no point is the hour from 12pm - 1pm in the AM regime.
Although with modern timezones, exact solar noon is an approximation. In the past, each locality had their own definition of noon based on the position of the sun.
@@BleuSquid thank you, it makes more sense now, though i still hate it
Scientists: We'll have flying cars by 2020.
Society: Hey do you think 11:59 am is closer to midnight or 12:01 am?
Society: 🤔🤔🤨🤨😶😶🤕
The people saying this is ambiguous should not be allowed to drive or vote.
I got a headache trying to figure out how that confused people.
I mean… time cannot go backwards so I can’t agree with that answer. Technically 12:03 am is like 23h57 away from midnight🤷♂️
I think that's the problem people are having.... The question is asking closest meaning numerical value away. But when talking about time people think about it as next occurring. The question is not asking which will occur soonest in a linear forward moving timeline... But we automatically apply that thought process
No, Closest doesn't matter if it's before or after. It's measured in minutes and hours in this case. 3 minutes difference makes it the closest.
Yes, but 12:03 is only 3 minutes after midnight, so it's very close to midnight.
Closest time to midnight not from midnight...so answer is 11:55 am and furthermore you cannot go back in time
As usual, the hardest part for me was Googling whether 12 am is midnight or midday. Once I figured that out and converted the times to the 24 hour clock (which is the one I find significantly easier to use), I was able to find the answer of 0:03 (12:03 am) to be correct.
Edit after finishing the video: I didn't even think of the interpretation of "closest to the next midnight" causing confusion lol.
But 12 am is never mentioned. I know that some people claim that 12 am and 12 pm are ambiguous between midnight and noon, but even they agree that e.g. 12:03am is 3 minutes after midnight, not 3 minutes after noon.
'To' is a preposition with several meanings in English, generally accepted as 'toward' or 'until'. It is an indication of time direction or, if you prefer, causality. 2 common examples to make that obvious: "I work from 8 to 4", and "I'm going to the store". In time-specific statements, it never means backwards though you could, if you were obtuse, use it that way. As in, "I work from 8 to 4" meaning traditionally 8am to 4pm, but the obtuse person meaning 4am to 8am. Worse, even more obtuse and secretly using a 24hr clock system, meaning from 8am one day to 4am the next day. You can use 'to', as in this video, meaning proximity, as in 'Jack is closest to Bill'. However, to apply that formula, grammatically, to time statements, would be quite wrong.
The 24hr clock references are mis-leading, as the stated riddle indicates the 12hr AM/PM system quite clearly.
All that to say the obtuse, and wrong answer, is 12:03am, and the correct answer, according to English grammar is 11:55am.
You're wrong.
"You can use 'to', as in this video, meaning proximity, as in 'Jack is closest to Bill'. However, to apply that formula, grammatically, to time statements, would be quite wrong."
How come? The question is asking for proximity and time can be treated like a number line where you are asking which number is in close proximity to another number, except that time operates under modular arithmetic. 12:03 is 3 minutes apart from midnight, and "closest" implies the least time difference, which is 3 in this case, so 12:03 is closest to midnight.
If you were obtuse, you would assume that time not moving backwards has any relevancy to a problem asking about close proximity. You could argue that 11:55 am is closest to midnight just as much as arguing that -100 is closer to 0 than 1. And grammatically, it would be correct to assume proximity when the proposition is paired with the word "closest". Interpreting "to" as "until" or "toward" is incorrect when considering the word "closest" which implies bidirectional consideration.
The obtuse, and wrong answer is 11:55 am and the correct answer is 12:03 am.
Living in the southern hemisphere it's good to know people in the northern hemisphere read the time in similar fashion to us.
Midnight = 12 AM
Midday = 12 PM
Because I didn't know how people in the northern hemisphere tell the time I was a bit confused, but now the answer I got was the same as most others because our understanding is the same, I was relieved.
Only americans do.
Wait...don't your clocks run counterclockwise? 😊
If this was a "difficult" problem, then i have no hope for humanity. 😁😁😁😁
After 11:59PM it goes to 00:00AM, só answers B and D aren't valid!
@@voidmayonnaise 11:59pm is called 23:59 in a 24 clock.
I learned way back in 3rd grade (U.S.A. level of schooling usually for age 8) that there is no such thing as 12:00 am or 12:00 pm. Midnight is to be represented as 12:00 midnight, and noon is to be represented as 12:00 noon. In recent years, as in this video, it has become commonplace to use 12:00 am for midnight and 12:00 pm for noon. My 3rd grade teacher would say this is wrong, though.
I agree with your 3rd grade teacher, and so would anyone who really understands what "am" and "pm" mean. "am" means before noon, and "pm" means after noon, so both 12 am and 12 pm should be midnight!
As teacher I don‘t understand why they have the answerchoice D. I assume the idea must be to learn the am/pm diffrence. (I guess it‘s for younger children) But with the right answer the closest to the next 12 o‘clock there is a chance that you think the child understood the concept when it‘s actually not…
I'll bet this was not really an actual school question, or if it was it's been changed.
As a high school teacher, I don’t get what confuses you. The question asks for whatever is closest to midnight, not to the NEXT midnight and option D is actually the only correct answer. Or is that not what you meant? Because it sure is how I read your comment.
@@mscbijles1256 Time only goes forward, so IRL what's "closer" would be so to the midnight following, giving A as the correct answer instead. I think that's the argument they give here.
@@mscbijles1256 well, there is the issue that even if the 11 hours options were PM, they're still be wrong because 12:03 would still be closest.
As a German I "guessed" the right answer, but I wasn't aware that 12 a.m. is midnight. I assumed this is high noon. This "wrong" counting 11 pm, 12 am (not 0 am or 12 pm), 1am is really sick.
My guess is the only people who get confused about this are the same people who are confidently wrong with all the PEMDAC puzzles.
Or maybe just the people who use the 24 h-clock instead of the am/pm-one, where for some 11:59 am and 12:00 am are half a day apart rather than a minute like in our system. Why does it flip from pm to am but go on from 11 to 12 rather than also flipping from from 11 to 0? Can you give me an elaborate explanation? Because that seems highly illogical to me.
Depending on the meaning of "closest" by the person (or AI Bot) who wrote the question A. 11:55am is the closest to the next midnight.
Since "next" is not stated, any midnight is sufficient to satisfy the question.
The question doesn't even have 'to the next midnight' just 'midnight'. And what other definition for closest?
@@98.11Deet depends on the definition of closest by the question writer.
Don't know their definition?
Oh dear!
Looks like there's insufficient information to solve the problem correctly!
@@fifiwoof1969 "Closest", in this context, would only be defined as the least amount of time between two points. You'd have much more luck arguing for ambiguity in the word "to", but even there, the argument is extremely weak, as "closest to" can only contextually imply a definition of proximity.
@@fifiwoof1969Without specifying, we would assume closest means nearest and not next. Otherwise, we could claim any arithmetic problem is ambiguous because we don't know if it is in base 10.
This was one of your videos that actually made me feel smart because I figured it out instantly.
Thanks a lot man, amazing as always.
Presh makes great videos
If this confuses the internet, humanity have a big problem
Linguistics play a role cuz in any other cunty 11:50 is closest to midnight
11:50 am is 10 minutes from noon. 11 hours and 50 minutes from midnight. Time works the same way no matter what time zone you’re in.
How could this be perceived as difficult, except in the current environment of no common sense? I could have done this in first grade.
Well, common sense would tell me that between 11:00 am and 12:00 am there's one hour difference because 12 - 11 = 1 in every other context.
But no, you need to specifically know that when it comes to the am/pm clock in the country the question was from 12 actually means 0. So 12:03 am actually needs to be interpreted as 0:03 am, which is only 3 minutes past midnight and not 12 hours and 3 minutes, as the numbers would imply.
So how again is it common sense that in this very specific case the order of numbers is changed in a way that 12 - 11 = -11 and not 1?
@@ailst Everyone already knows what AM and PM means in the context of a 12 hour clock. That's not the confusion here.
If all the problems of the US metric system (or rather, Imperial System) weren't enough, it still has the 12h clock k