Exercise 2: single.php vs. singular.php When Both Exist — Possible Solution
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THE ANSWER: single.php WINS
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Per this chapter's own hierarchy table for a single blog post, the
order checked is: post-type-and-slug specific, then post-type
specific, then single.php (position 3), then singular.php (position
4), then index.php last. Because single.php is checked and found to
exist BEFORE singular.php is ever even checked, WordPress uses
single.php and stops there - singular.php is never reached in the
search for this particular page type.

WHY THE ORDER MATTERS, NOT JUST WHICH FILES EXIST
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Per this chapter's own core-idea explanation, WordPress "uses the
first file that actually exists" - not the "most specific" file in
some abstract sense, and not by comparing all existing candidates
against each other. The search is strictly sequential: it checks each
position in order and stops the moment it finds a match. Since
single.php sits earlier in the defined order than singular.php,
single.php's existence alone is sufficient to end the search there,
regardless of whether singular.php also happens to exist further down
the list.

WHY singular.php IS "EFFECTIVELY UNUSED" FOR THIS SPECIFIC PAGE TYPE
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singular.php isn't broken or invalid - it's a real, valid template
file that WordPress would gladly use if single.php didn't exist. But
because single.php DOES exist in this theme, and sits earlier in the
checked order, singular.php never gets its turn for single-post pages
specifically. It remains genuinely useful for a different case: a
theme with a Page but no page.php would fall through to singular.php
for that Page instead, since singular.php serves as a shared fallback
for both posts and pages, positioned after their own more specific
single/page templates in each respective chain.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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It identifies single.php as the winner and explains precisely why,
using this chapter's own strict sequential-search model rather than a
vague notion of "specificity," and clarifies that singular.php remains
a genuinely useful file for other page types even though it's bypassed
here specifically.