When you’re asked the letter riddle of “what comes once in a year, twice in a month”, can you figure out the answer? You can come up with several possible answers, like letter F, letter N, letter R, or odd numbers.
There are two common and more specific letter riddles:
- What comes once in a year, twice in a month, 4 times in a week, and 6 times in a day?
- What comes once in a year, twice in a month, 3 in a week, and 4 times in a day?
Don’t Overthink and Change Words
You may overthink a riddle’s solution, but sometimes simplicity is key. For example, when you think about what happens 6 times in a day or 4 times in a day, you may calculate it happens 2,190 times (365 times 6) in a year or 1,460 times (365 times 4) in a year. You’ll keep thinking and thinking but cannot get the answer. You make the question complicated in this way.
You may also change words without realizing it while thinking about the answer. For example, some people change the word “a” in the riddle “What comes once in a year, twice in a month, 4 times in a week?” to the word “every”. So they’ll make the question to “What comes once in every year, twice in every month, 4 times in every week?” and have the answer “letter E”.
Here is their explanation:
E appears once in the word “year”.
E appears twice in “every month”
E appears four times in “every week”
However, that’s not correct as the question is not exactly as written. Let’s find the right answers.
What Comes Once In A Year, Twice In A Month, 4 Times In A Week And 6 Times In A Day?
Generally, there are 3 valid answers for this riddle: letter F, letter N, and odd numbers. Below are our explanations which can make you better understand why they’re the answers.
1. Letter “F”
The following is the explanation:
Once in a Year: Out of the 12 months, only “February” has the letter ‘F’, so it appears once when counting in the spelling of all months.
Twice in a Month: There are 4 weeks in a month, “First” and “Fourth” weeks both have the letter ‘F’, totaling 2 ‘F’s while counting which week of the month it is.
Four Times in a Week: There are 7 days in a week, “First” (Sunday), “Fourth” (Wednesday), and “Fifth” (Thursday) contain the letter ‘F’. So totally 4 ‘F’s in a week.
Six Times in a Day: There are 24 hours in a day, the hours that contain the letter ‘F’ are “Four”, “Five”, “Fourteen”, “Fifteen”, and “Twenty-Four”. Counting all the ‘F’s in these hours, ‘F’ comes 6 times.
2. Letter “N”
Here is the explanation:
Once in a Year: The phrase “in a year” contains one “N”.
Twice in a Month: The phrase “in a month” contains two “N”s.
Four Times in a Week: “Monday”, “Wednesday”, and “Sunday” all contain one letter “N”. plus another “N” in the phrase “in a week”. So there are four “N”.
Six Times in a Day: The divisions of a day a day can be divided in four parts: “Morning”, “Afternoon”, “Evening” and “Night”, you can see there are total 6 “N” in them.
3. Odd Numbers
Here with the explanation:
Once in a Year: A year can be represented by the number “1”, which is an odd number.
Twice in a Month: A month has 4 weeks, so there are two odd weeks in it: 1st week. So two times odd numbers occur.
Four Times in a Week: A week has 7 days, and there are 4 odd numbers: “1”, “3”, “5”, and “7”.
Six Times in a Day: If 24 hours are divided as 12 hours * 2, then the odd numbers come 6 times: “1”, “3”, “5”, “7”, “9”, and “11”.
What Comes Once In A Year, Twice In A Month, Three Times In A Week, And Four Times In A Day?
The answer is Letter R. Here’s why:
Once in a Year: The letter ‘R’ appears once in “Year“.
Twice in a Month: There are 7 months with the letter “R”, like “January”, “February”, “March”, “September”, “October”, “November”, and “December”, but only the month of “February” have two “R”.
Three Times in a Week: There are 7 days in a week and “R” occurs in Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, totally 3 times.
Four Times in a Day: If 24 hours are named as 12 hours am and 12 hours pm, there would be totally 4 times “R”’ appears in the time: Three am, Four am, Three pm, and Four pm.
Final Thought
Hope you can find these answers and explanations for “what comes once in a year twice in a month” riddle are useful. As you can see, riddles can make you think from different angles and stimulate you thinking skills to find a logical answer.
