Drunkard wolverine I'd like to ask for some hint for the following math exercise below. I've been working on it for days now and it drives me crazy.

There is a drunkard wolverine who drinks at least $1$ mug of beer every day. (The number of mugs per day is an integer. The wolverine lives forever, so there are infinitely many days.) Every week the wolverine drinks $12$ mugs of beer in total. Prove that one can choose some consecutive days where the number of consumed mugs of beer is $20$.
(A "week" means $7$ days from Monday to Sunday.)

This can be translated into algebraic language; then it says that if $\left(\ldots, m_{-1}, m_0, m_1, m_2, \ldots\right)$ is a sequence of positive integers (infinite in both directions) such that $m_{7i+1} + m_{7i+2} + \cdots + m_{7i+7} = 12$ for each integer $i$, then there exist $u \leq v$ such that $m_u + m_{u+1} + \cdots + m_v = 20$.
The problem is similar to Example 6 of http://www.math.uvic.ca/faculty/jing/222pigeonhole.pdf .
 A: Hint: For a period of three consecutive weeks, keep track of the total number of beers the wolverine has consumed, mod $20$. This number will start at $1$ on the Monday of the first week and end at $16$ on the final Sunday, at which point the Wolverine has consumed a total of $36$ beers.  
Rest of solution below:

 Since there are $21$ days altogether and only $20$ residues mod $20$, the pigeonhole principle says some residue must repeat within the three-week period, which means the wolverine has consumed some multiple of $20$ beers from the first of those two days to the second. But the only (positive) multiple of $20$ less than $36$ is $20$ itself.

A: Let $a_i$ be the total number of mugs drunk on days $1$ through $i$.
$a_1,a_2,\ldots$ is a strictly increasing sequence of positive integers, such that $a_{7k} = 12k$ for positive integers $k$.
It turns out that it suffices to look at the first $35$ days.
Consider $a_{15}, a_{16}, \ldots,a_{35}, a_1+20, a_2+20,\ldots, a_{21}+20$. This is a list of $42$ numbers ranging from $21$ to $60$, so some number must appear [at least] twice in that list. Because $(a_i)$ is strictly increasing, $a_{15},\ldots, a_{35}$ must be distinct, and $a_1+20, \ldots, a_{21} +20$ must be distinct. Can you conclude from here?

Note that this answer is inferior to Barry Cipra's since this answer requires 35 days while his requires only 21.
A: Turns out the answer by @BarryCipra is tight, in the sense that we cannot prove it using $20$ (or fewer) days.  
Here is a drinking schedule, listing the cumulative consumption after the first $20$ days.


*

*week $1: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12$

*week $2: 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24$

*week $3$ (minus last day)$: 26, 28, 30, 33, 34, 35$
It is clear that no pair of numbers differ by $20$ (or in Barry's context, we have used every residue of mod $20$ exactly once).
A: Every week the wolverine drinks 12 mugs with one guaranteed per day, so using the sticks and stones method, there are $\dbinom{12-7+6}{6}=462$ ways the wolverine can drink beer in one week. Hopefully this helps in some way.
