to be honest, you’re gut intutition was correct. I have studied this topic in detail and concluded that the phenomena (properly defined) is not real. Very rigorous experiments on this are lacking, the only ones I know of were performed by Prof. Brownridge and show no real effect.

That is, with *identical containers* of hot and cold water being cooled *under identical conditions*, the the cold water will always start freezing first.

The real upshot is that most experiments do not properly control for all the confounding variables

– slight differences in containers, such as the nucleation sites they have, which cannot be avoided.
– differences thermal conduction, etc
– differences in dissolved gases & solids
– differences in evaporation

The real lesson here is that we must precisely define what we are talking about and make sure the experiment controls for every possible confounding variable.

I have written a much longer exposition of this if you are interested on my blog:
https://moreisdifferent.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/does-hot-water-freeze-faster-than-cold/