Friday
I gave the following puzzle to my students.
Puzzle. A cowboy rides into town on Friday, stays for three days, then leaves on Friday. How come?
Most of them submitted the standard answer: his horse is named Friday.
One student suggested that the town was named Onfriday. This solution works well when the puzzle is given orally, but my homework was typed, so it feels less elegant.
Here are two more solutions that also work:
- He drank so much that he believed he stayed for three days, while in reality, the other four days were lost in a blackout.
- The cowboy left after three days, then later returned and left again on Friday.
And here is my favorite solution:
- The town has a quirky tradition: they celebrate fried foods and call the day Friday (get it?). The cowboy came for this special event, which happened to be held on a Tuesday.
Share:
Ivan:
The cowboy was a witness of cultural relativity: this particular culture has a 3-day week and one of the days is called Friday.
18 April 2026, 11:08 pmLilac:
I assumed this was an astronomy puzzle. Like how sometimes day and year need to be precisified in terms of rotations on axes or sidereal meanings. So here day could refer to a midnight sun phenomenon where one of the “day”s is extremely long, perhaps North of the Arctic Circle in Russia or Scandinavia.
19 April 2026, 3:57 pmMarc:
The town is so big that the ride from the town’s edge to his hotel takes two days. He arrives at the hotel on Sunday, stays for three nights and has to leave already on Wednsday in order to be out of town by Friday.
24 April 2026, 6:32 am