Friday Puzzler -- What Day?

Re: Friday Puzzler -- What Day?

Larry Barrett

My head hurts. If today would be Friday, then tomorrow would be Saturday and yesterday would be Thursday. But if yesterday (Thursday) would be Saturday, then today would be Sunday, ...

I give up.

I agree

Alex Y

I got the same answer as you, Larry. But I have seen arguments for Wednesday, Friday, or any day. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any word from the original author about his intended answer.

The challenge is the wording of the problem. You have to correct the grammar to parse it in a way that gets to a good answer. Using the subjunctive "were" in place of "was", I separate the actual timeframe in which Samuel is speaking from the hypothetical timeframe about which he is speaking to clarify the statement along these lines:

Samuel said, "If the day we currently label as 'yesterday' were hypothetically tomorrow, then the hypothetical 'today' would be Friday."

Or, symbolically, using A for actual and H for hypothetical:

Yesterday(A) = Tomorrow(H)

thus

Yesterday(A) = Yesterday(H) + 2

Knowing that two-day shift, we get Today(A) =Today(H) + 2

Since Today(H) = Friday, Today (A) = Sunday.

Other Answers:

Wednesday Some people have argued that the Yesterday is the hypothetical and the tomorrow is actual. I don't see it that way, but apparently several people do. When I say "if A were B" I mean the hypothetical substitution of B for A, not the other way around.

Any day Don't do the grammar correction. "If yesterday was tomorrow, today would be Friday." is an if-then sentence where the premise is false (yesterday was not tomorrow), so the statement is true, no matter when Samuel spoke. I think this is the most correct answer, but almost certainly not what was intended.

Friday answers involved such 'out-of-the-box" thinking as reversal of the arrow of time, or circular time in a two-day week. Creative, but I think not the intent!