I was asked why there are two tides a day in an interview for my undergraduate University place. I blundered through to the classic answer. This stackexchange discussion made me realize I was even more of an imposter than I thought :-).

If it makes you feel better, the crust of the earth does bulge more in line with the classic answer due to the flow of the underlying magma being effectively uninterrupted by solid obstructions. Which then means the classic tidal answer is technically correct, except what we observe as tides is a delta between land and ocean.