πŸ“– CLOCK NERD: TIME TELL RUSH← WIKI

Twenty clocks. One stopwatch. Nothing else.

A speedrun about reading analog clocks. Twenty dials, one after another, and the only number that matters is how long the whole set took you. Punch each time in as four digits and the clock flips the instant you land it; miss and it is five seconds straight onto your run. The game shows you your pace against your own personal best split by split while you are still running, and hands you a sheet at the end showing exactly which clock cost you the record.

β–Ά PLAY CLOCK NERD: TIME TELL RUSHVERSION Bby Split Second Softworks

STORY & LORE

It Used To Be An Idle Game

Version A was Clock Watch: a gentle quiz that also counted how long you left the tab open, and paid you leaderboard points for the leaving. It was catalogued as an idle game and it was not one β€” the top of the board belonged to whoever had forgotten a tab, not to whoever could read a dial. Version B threw out the idle layer entirely and rebuilt what was left as the thing it was always closer to: a rush.

Four Digits

The old version wanted an hour, then minutes, then an AM/PM toggle that never affected anything. The new one wants HHMM and nothing else β€” 0315, four keys, done. There is no CHECK button to reach for and no ambiguity about whether a leading 1 is one o'clock or eleven. The entry guards itself: a two-digit hour that could not exist on a clock face is refused as a keystroke rather than charged as a wrong answer.

HOW IT PLAYS

The Run

Exactly twenty clocks. The stopwatch starts on the first one and does not stop for anything β€” not for a wrong answer, not for the panel between clocks. Your time is the score, and the manifest declares scoreDirection 'low', so the leaderboard is sorted fastest-first.

Penalty

A wrong answer adds five seconds and shows you the right time before moving on. There is no way to lose a run and no way to be knocked out β€” the punishment is entirely on the clock.

Difficulty Ramp

Inside a single run: clocks 1-4 are o'clocks and half-hours, 5-8 add the quarters, 9-13 are on the five-minute marks, and 14-20 can be any minute at all. The hard half of the run is where a good time is actually made.

Live Pace

The splits from your best run are stored. While you are running, the delta under the timer shows whether you are up or down against that run at this exact point in it, penalties included. Green means the record is in danger.

The Sheet

At the end, all twenty splits are laid out. Any split faster than the one it replaced in your best run is green; every miss is red. It is the fastest way to see whether you lost the run to one disaster or to twenty slightly slow reads.

Keyboard

Digits type, BACKSPACE deletes, ENTER starts a run or force-checks an answer, R restarts from the results screen. Serious times are set on a keyboard; the on-screen pad is there for touch.

RANKS

Awarded on total run time for the full twenty clocks, penalties included.

RankTime
CLOCK NERDunder 30.00
ATOMICunder 42.00
GRANDFATHERunder 56.00
WALL CLOCKunder 1:15
POCKET WATCHunder 1:40
HOURGLASSunder 2:20
SUNDIALanything slower

VERSION HISTORY

VERSION B2026-09-08
  • Renamed from Clock Watch to Clock Nerd: Time Tell Rush and rebuilt as a speedrun. Recategorised out of idle and into arcade; the slug stays time-game so existing links and leaderboard history survive.
  • Removed the Time Invested idle layer entirely. It paid leaderboard points for leaving a tab open β€” an overnight tab was worth 7,200 points against roughly 150-350 for a well-played round β€” so the board ranked uptime, not skill.
  • Runs are now twenty clocks against a stopwatch, scored on total time (scoreDirection 'low', label BEST TIME). Wrong answers add five seconds instead of ending anything.
  • New four-digit HHMM entry with an input guard on impossible hours, auto-submitting on the fourth key. AM/PM removed β€” it never affected correctness.
  • Full keyboard support: digits, BACKSPACE, ENTER, R.
  • Added live split-by-split pace against your personal best, a twenty-pip progress strip, and an end-of-run split sheet marking improved splits and misses.
  • Fixed: gameOver() was being fired every 15 seconds on a timer, telling the host the run had ended over and over. It now fires exactly once, when a run actually ends.
  • Fixed: the same 15-second timer re-requested 'play' tokens indefinitely. Each token reason now fires at most once per session, and the declared 'high_score' rule is finally used.
  • Fixed: the entire results panel (#over, its title, final score, sub-line and KEEP WATCHING button) was dead markup β€” nothing in the game ever showed it. It is now the run results screen.
  • Cloud save enabled, merging by best-of so a stale save on either side cannot wipe a good run.
  • Eight achievements added; the manifest previously declared none.
VERSION A2026-06-28
  • Initial catalogued version, as Clock Watch: an untimed clock-reading quiz with an idle 'Time Invested' counter that added leaderboard points for real time spent with the tab open.