It sounds like the kind of question you would be dismayed to hear schoolchildren getting wrong: which takes less time to freeze, cold or hot water? Common sense and the laws of thermodynamics appear to insist that cold water must freeze first. For example, Newton's law of cooling states that the rate at which a body cools is proportional to the temperature difference between the object and its surroundings. But, in fact, it does seem as though hot water sometimes "overtakes" cold as it cools.
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Philip Ball (2006) studied this question.