Calling this a tug-of-war makes the mechanism vivid, but there was no rope, no conscious contest and perhaps no clean moment when one side “won”. There were two transfers of angular momentum whose strengths depended on a planet that was itself continually changing.

That is the version I find most persuasive to hold lightly. Earth’s day may have remained near 19 hours for an interval longer than complex animals have existed, because sunlight organised the air in just the right rhythm to counter the Moon’s pull on the sea. The evidence is suggestive, the mechanism is physically plausible, and neither is final.