DLyons Jun 11, 2015:

And "obverse" Donal, "reverse" Daryo. :-)

Catharine Cellier-Smart (asker) Jun 11, 2015:

Tails Tails

Catharine Cellier-Smart (asker) Jun 11, 2015:

Heads or tails Heads is Tony
Tails is Andrew

Catharine Cellier-Smart (asker) Jun 11, 2015:

Agree I wouldn't feel comfortable to close without grading as I got a suitable answer.

Tony M Jun 11, 2015:

@ Jennifer It's not a question of KudoZ points, it's a matter of the simple corutesy of thanking someone with a little gesture.

What I usually do in this sort of situation is award just one point, as a token of appreciation, but it's not big enough to make the 'other' person feel they've lost out.

Jennifer White Jun 11, 2015:

Well The only solution is for Catharine to close the question without grading! Reason - other. Are extra Kudos points really that important??

Tony M Jun 10, 2015:

Timing The system is not that accurate in the first place, and I believe it has been 'slugged' so that differences very early in the chronology are masked.

All I know is that when I submitted my answer and the page was refreshed, no other answer appeared at that point; I was quite surprised to see the other answer had appeared when I refreshed the page again later.
All just goes to show that the approximate timings shown should not really be used as the basis of any kind of linguistic decisions ;-)

Catharine Cellier-Smart (asker) Jun 10, 2015:

Toss a coin? To be honest I was thinking of tossing a coin! I don't how else to decide between two virtually identical answers.

DLyons Jun 10, 2015:

It's the most probable scenario. But not impossible that they could be reversed.

Anyway what really counts is the time that each answer hit their send key and the one with the faster email provider could easily overcome being slightly later at sending.

philgoddard Jun 10, 2015:

I always assume that if two answers are shown, both at 3 minutes, the first one listed was the first one received. It's extremely unlikely that two answers can be posted at exactly the same second.