Puzzles

Grandfather Clock Puzzle (Apartments)

Location: Wood Side Apartments, Room 208 2F
Requires: Clock Key: Inside the hole in the wall in the open bedroom of room 202, Wood Side Apartments 2F.

Contents

• Intro
• Solution
  • Easy
  • Normal/Hard/Extra

Intro

There are several clues in this apartment on how to solve this puzzle, including this small clock room and the living room.

The scars from the past shall
remove the nail that stops Time.

The idea is to push the clock out of the way to see what is behind it, but it won't move as is so you'll need to find more clues. Directly opposite the clock on the other wall, you'll find the "scars from the past" that the riddle alludes to. The names Henry, Mildred and Scott are etched in the wall alongside directional arrows, which appear to correspond to the three hands of the clock. But which ones? It looks like we could still use more information.

Lastly, in the living room of the apartment you'll find a memo by the phone on the small table along the wall. This memo is different depending on your riddle level.

Easy

Three different sizes,
time on the run.
Three young men circlin'
round the sun.
Henry is short and
very, very slow,
Scott can't stop,
he's always on the go.

"Three different sizes" refers to the three hands of the clock – hour, minute, second – which are of different lengths and thicknesses. It also likens the hands to men, giving the names Henry and Scott.

Henry is clearly the hour hand, which is the shortest hand and moves the slowest. Scott must be the second hand which is always on the go as it ticks around the clock face. There is no mention of the minute hand, but it must be Mildred, the only remaining name from the scars.

There's also a subtler way to tell the names of the clock hands, which confirms Mildred's identity. Notice anything about the first letters of each name of the scratches on the wall?

• (H) Henry - (H) Hours
• (M) Mildred - (M) Minutes
• (S) Scott - (S) Seconds

So that makes things very clear. But what of the arrows beside each name etched in the wall? They must represent the direction the corresponding hands face on the clock. You'll have to estimate the approximate number each arrow would be facing on the clock. Upon doing so, you should be left with this:

• Henry (hour hand): facing 9 (9 hours)
• Mildred (minute hand): facing 2 (10 minutes)
• Scott (second hand): facing 3 (15 seconds)

And there's your solution. You must set the clock to 9:10 and 15 seconds. You'll notice you cannot move the second hand, but it's already locked in place at 15 seconds. So go ahead and move the fat, short hand to 9 and the longer hand to 2 and you'll hear a clank. That is the scars from the past removing the nail that stops time. For the record, any time between 9:07 and 9:13 should work, so don't worry if it's not exact.

Normal/Hard/Extra

Three needles stand of
three different heights.
The fat, the tall and the thin.
From slow to fast they
move to the right.
Scott rests not on three,
but fifteen.

"Three needles stand of three different heights" describes the three hands of the clock. "The fat, the tall and the thin" – hour, minute and second hands.

"From slow to fast they move to the right" describes the order the hands will appear on the clock face from left to right. That means the slow hour hand will be farthest left, the faster minute hand to its right, and the even faster second hand to the right of both.

Further, the riddle concludes by telling us that "Scott rests not on three, but fifteen." This means that Scott represents the second hand, just like the Easy puzzle. When the second hand sits over the 3 on a clock face, it actually means 15 seconds. You'll also notice that the second hand already sits at 15 seconds on this clock and cannot be manipulated, so we can move past this one.

Unlike the Easy mode riddle, you're not told any other names in memo, but you'll still find the names on the wall along with directional arrows. Even if you can't deduce that the first letter of each name indicates which hand it represents (H/M/S), you can use the hint in the riddle that the hour, minute and second hands move from left to right. Therefore, you should be left with this:

• Henry: facing 9 (farthest left, therefore hour hand) = 9 hours
• Mildred: facing 2 (right of hour hand, therefore minute hand) = 10 minutes
• Scott: facing 3 (farthest right, therefore second hand) = 15 seconds

So there we go, it's the same solution as the Easy riddle. Again, you can't move the second hand but it's already set on 15 seconds. Simply use the D-pad to set the clock to 9:10 (anywhere within the range of 9:07 to 9:13 will work) and you'll hear the clank that is the nail of time being removed.

You can now push the clock and move on. For future reference, the solution to this puzzle is always 9:10 on all riddle levels.