Hot water freezes faster than cold?

[Einstein Mcfly]

http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/hot-water-freezes-faster-cold-and-now-we-know-why

I thought that this had never been shown to happen with closed containers. I always thought that this was an issue of open containers allowing for evaporation and hence a smaller amount of frozen water, and that if lids were put on then the cold froze faster.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the vague explanation proposed in this link?

 

[UltrafastPED]

See http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_water.html