[Hogman]

I don't know what a perfect clock is. Does that mean that the gears are independent and the gears are infinitely small so that the hand swings perfectly without pause?

Yes.

Well, I don't do math, but shouldn't this be solvable by graphing the fiction of degrees of the hour hand versus time and the degrees of the minute hand by time?

(click to show/hide)

It seems it is, although I can't be bothered to do the actual math.  Luckily someone else already did:
[/spoler]

This is another way of doing it. The answers are the same as mine.

[Wilshire]

Math makes my brain happy - as long as I'm not the one doing all the solving.

Thanks for providing both of you

[Callan S.]

You know, riddles don't traditionally have an incredibly mathy answer. Indeed that's usually the trap option. Usually they are supposed to be able to be answered by common knowledge - that's what makes them a challenge to everyone and not just a specialist few. It seems odd to me to have one with a very mathy answer

[Callan S.]

Here's a video - the customer is a bit(?) bitchy but he has a point : https://youtu.be/HFJlgrtpGZY?t=89

I can't say I will never have a dyslexic (or is it dyscalculic?) moment. But the manager saying they definitely recognizes the difference between half a dollar and half a cent, but says they plainly don't recognize a difference between $0.002 and 0.002 cents - that's (waaaait for it!) priceless.

[Hogman]

You know, riddles don't traditionally have an incredibly mathy answer. Indeed that's usually the trap option. Usually they are supposed to be able to be answered by common knowledge - that's what makes them a challenge to everyone and not just a specialist few. It seems odd to me to have one with a very mathy answer

Yes, I think of riddles as language-based puzzles, so I wouldn't actually call any of the questions posed here a riddle.

Here's a video - the customer is a bit(?) bitchy but he has a point : https://youtu.be/HFJlgrtpGZY?t=89

I can't say I will never have a dyslexic (or is it dyscalculic?) moment. But the manager saying they definitely recognizes the difference between half a dollar and half a cent, but says they plainly don't recognize a difference between $0.002 and 0.002 cents - that's (waaaait for it!) priceless.

Brilliant! I'm glad she said "I'm not a mathematician", I would never have guessed.