How can one clock - in an East Coast state - and a different clock - in a West Coast state - have exactly the same time?

Answer 1

East and West Coasts With Exact Same HourIf both clocks are correct for their respective timezones, they live in Oregon and Florida which have portions of their state in the Mountain and Central time zones respectively, despite being coastal states. Also, it is the day of the fall daylight savings, at 1:30am when the interval between 1-2am is repeated. From the original QuestionerI couldn't include all of this in the question itself, so I posted it in the "answer". Both clocks are correct for their respective time zones. Both clocks are in perfect working order. Would I have put this question in the "Brain Teasers" category if the answer was as simple as "one of the clocks is broken/fast/slow"? The first answer is correct.

The actual text of the question (and what I would have posted as the question if I had more space) is:

"Two sisters, April and Beth, are talking on the phone. April is in an East Coast state and Beth is in a West Coast state (both "East Coast" and "West Coast" refer to the continental US, and the States that are bordered by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, respectively). At one point in the conversation, April asks Beth, "What time is it over there?" Beth replies "1:30". April then says, "that's funny, it's the same time here." Both clocks are in perfect working order and set correctly for their respective time zones. How is this possible?"

This is a brain teaser because the uninformed reader will assume that "East Coast state" means "Eastern Time Zone", and "West Coast state" means "Pacific Time zone". Therefore, the reader will perceive that their SHOULD be a 3-hour difference between the two clocks. So there are three hours that the answerer must account for. One is accounted for by the fact that part of Florida's panhandle is actually in the Central Time Zone, rather than the Eastern. Another hour is explained by the part of Oregon that is in the Mountain Time Zone, rather than the Pacific. So, If April lives in that part of Florida, and Beth lives in that part of Oregon, there is really only one hour left to explain. And Beth's reply ("1:30") is a clue to that part of the riddle.

When Daylight Savings Time ends, in the fall, people in the US (except Arizona and parts of Ohio and Kentucky, which don't observe DST), set their clocks back one hour. Technically, this occurs at 2 am local time, and the clock is set back to 1 am (though most people just set their clocks back before they go to bed, or do it in the morning, rather than stay up that late, April and Beth are technical gals, and wait for the proper time to set their clocks back). But because this is based on local time, people in the Central Time Zone will set their clocks back an hour before folks in the Mountain Time Zone do so. Since the MTZ is (normally) an hour behind the CTZ, and since the Non-DST time is an hour behind DST, there is a period of one hour each year, when Non-DST Central time is exactly equal to DST Mountain time.