The New Year's Day Puzzle
Solution

The following statements are both true:

• New Year's Day is always on the same day of the week as Christmas;
• New Year's Day is never on the same day of the week as Christmas;

This is because we implicitly expect New Year's Day to be discussed in terms of the "nearest" Christmas Day, which occurs a week previously, but that Christmas Day happens to belong to the previous year. So a more correct statement would be:

• New Year's Day is always on the same day of the week as Christmas of the previous year;
• New Year's Day is never on the same day of the week as Christmas of the same year, it's one day ahead (or two, in a leap year);

Back to The New Year's Day Puzzle;