This fun game just made me realize that <i>actually using</i> analog watch does not require converting the time to HH:MM.<p>I've been using analog watch for years, my Apple Watch face is set to analog and, apparently, I read the time as "it's almost 11", but never as "it's 10:58".
Yep this is why I prefer analog watches. They are much faster to internalize the time but slower to convert to numbers. Because it’s an abstraction I innately know as someone who learned to read them as a child they are very familiar and easy to read. You really only need the actual numbers when someone asks you for the time.
Technology Connections did a really great video on this a few years ago.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeopkvAP-ag" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeopkvAP-ag</a><p>Apparently being raised with analog clocks vs digital changes how one intuits the passage of time.
The classic example of this is when someone sees you check your watch, then they ask the time, and you have to check the watch again to see what time it actually is. A comment is almost always made about how the watch was just checked.
Yes, if you use an analog indicator for an analog parameter, you can skip a „parse” step. Similarly, airplanes use analog indicators, or digital ones that either mimic their analog counterparts, or in some way incorporate visual aids that go past a number. This allows the pilot to, at a glance, check the values, see the rate of change, get a useful readout even if the value is noisy or oscillating.
I got a mechanical watch with a 24-hour dial, and I see it as “mid-morning”, “late afternoon” etc.<p>It does annoy me that it’s harder to find 24-hr dials with noon at the top and midnight at the bottom. They all put midnight at the top for some reason.
Same, I find it easier to see time on analogue. When I see 3:30 for example, in my head I see hands of a watch (in-fact, a very particular watch I grew up seeing in the shade in courtyard). I visualize not just the watch but the lighting at that time of day as well. Gives me perfect sense of how late or early in the day that time means.
The same “kids across the street” I reference in another comment needed translation from “quarter to eleven” when they’d ask the time. Makes sense given they couldn’t read an analog face at the time.
My 18 year old daughter is the same (and also can't read an analog clock). Despite me using "quarter to," "quarter past," and "half past" regularly throughout her life. And we having analog clocks in most communal spaces in our house. And we drilled her on analog clocks for two summers in a row...
Similarly, when I moved from the UK to Canada, people often didn't understand what I meant when I said it was "half ten", which is the common way of saying ten thirty, at least where I grew up.
I’m a “quarter past” person but I’ve always been confused by “half ten” (which thankfully isn’t used in Australia). But in German, “half ten” means 9:30, which is make more sense to me (probably because I’m used to how German speech often drops words, which is less common in English)
Next, go to Germany or the Netherlands where half ten means 9:30.
I never heard that when I lived in the UK in the 70s, but only in Ireland in the late 90s.
Half ten? So.. 5. Got it.
yeah, i've been using cheap mechanical analog watches and wouldn't trust it to be accurate to-the-minute by the end of the day anyway. i kind of enjoy knowing only the approximate time.
That's because one doesn't usually look at their watch to find out what the time is: most of the time (pun unintended) we want to how much time is left for an activity, or for an activity to start.<p>As in, how many more minutes before my flight takes off, or how much time left for this exam?
This could be good for kids to learn how to read analog clocks. I remember this being something we did in school as kids... racing to read a clock faster than the other kid, to move on to the next section of an obstacle course. From what I understand that is becoming a lost skill.
Ten years ago the kids across the street from us (who were 9-10 at the time) would ask the time, and I’d show them my watch. They’d still ask what time it was because they couldn’t read the analog face on my watch.<p>The oldest is in college now. Next time I see her, I’ll ask if she ever learned to read an analog face.
> kids to learn how to read analog clocks [...] From what I understand that is becoming a lost skill.<p>I don't think kids need to learn to read analog clocks anymore, in the same way that we don't teach kids to use slide rules. Technology has advanced enough that analog clocks have joined polaroid cameras and vinyl records in the "obsolete technology that some people use for nostalgia or fashion" category.<p>(for the record, I grew up with analog clocks and I am fully fluent in using them.)
There are still analog clocks all over the place in public spaces. Sure, a person probably has their phone on them, but it seems strange that people wouldn't want to know how to read them instead of just seeing them as weird slowly moving art installations.<p>Analog clocks also have the benefit of being able to better visualize time. A lot of people with ADHD talk about time blindness. One common thing sold to them are analog countdown timers that look like a big pie chart. An analog watch effectively does the same thing, especially a dive watch. The user can see how much time they have instead of needing to calculate it and try to translate that into some kind of meaning. Rarely does anyone need to know the exact time, and the analog clock shines at giving an approximate time quickly, to see progress, without actually ever having to know what time it is. A progress bar for the day, if you will.<p>One of my favorite watches is one with a single hand and a 24-hour dial. I like it for weekends and vacation. I want a watch, I want to know roughly where I'm at in the day, but I don't want to stress about the minutes.
Analog clocks are still being taught in schools, at least partially, for their mathematical education purposes. The age at with kids learn to read analog clocks is the same age where kids are skip counting and starting to see numbers in different modes of representations, both of which analog clocks provide, forcing kids to think mathematically in their everyday lives. Further in their math education, it also becomes a helpful jumping off point for understanding modulo arithmetic and non-base 10 counting systems.
> Technology has advanced enough that analog clocks have joined polaroid cameras and vinyl records<p>assumption digital 'more advanced' than analog.<p>unclear. How digital more 'advanced'? Is regression, not advance.<p>Analog watch. See gap between minute hand and start of meeting. See gap get smaller. Instant.<p>Colleague in different time zone? See hour hand -3 steps, faster than "14 - 3 is 11". If digital even have 24 hr time, many no.<p>Teach kids. Analog visible, easy to read, child can see. Child can turn hands on wooden clock, manipulate. Now plus 1 hour, now plus 1.5 hours. Move long hand forward 1 rotation, 1.5 rotations.<p>Digital? Teach kids "now plus 90 minutes" digital? Hard math. now plus 90 is now (hour) plus 1 and now (minute) plus 30. Teach kids "now minus 10". Does hour change? Why hour change? why now hour different from now minute? daddy daddy what about now seconds? All abstract, cannot touch. Daddy why move hour number first?<p>Digital. 1 on microwave less than 99. Where else in world 1 < 99 makes sense? Digital time math crazy.
Watches and clocks just aren't ageing out as quickly as so much other tech. Analog watches also have the advantage of being able to so someone why our clocks are the way they are, by comparing them to solar clocks.<p>Also it would be a bit to close to Futurama to see e.g. Big Ben get a digital overhaul.
It seems to not support 24h? When I see e.g. 17:35 I want to type 17:35 instead of 5:35. Probably because I very seldomly see 5:35 in real life! Interesting observation by itself, but slightly annoying that I have to convert to 12h for this game.
Fun game! Definitely needed the practice rounds. Would love to see a comparison of some sort of how well everyone else did.<p>analog.watch
Daily Challenge 2026-07-09<p>Score: 22,020
Time: 32.0s
Good for timely brain gearings
Hmm, 12AM/PM watch faces don't register 0 as the hour.
This was fun! Good call on directing to the free play before jumping into the daily challenge. I was disappointed when I realized there was no leader board for the daily challenge.
Thanks for playing. It's been a fun little game I play to make sure I don't embarrass myself when somebody asks me what time it is, since I wear a lot of watches. I'd love to add a global leaderboard, but right now it's all client-side! A server-authoritative leaderboard seemed a bit too complex, especially i.r.t. preventing cheating, but I might tackle it at some point.
I did find it easier to do but that's because I wear analog watches everyday (I don't need distractions on my wrist).<p>The other comments did remind me that when asked for the time I always give an estimate quickly and then read the exact time a little later. I almost always round to the nearest minute or quarter of an hour, and almost never read the seconds hand.<p>Fun game!
To OP, you should look into Barbara Arrowsmith-Young's clock exercises. They start with a single hand, and add more and more hands until the units get out into centuries or millennia.
Could this be extended to lean into teaching quantum physics ?<p>Include seconds/ sub seconds hand in the watch, and people will realize the watch face time + time it takes to read will never equal the watch face time.<p>You can know the exact time, by looking at the analog watch face, or you can measure it (convert it) but it will not be the same anymore.
The daily challenge doesn't seem to work for me. 58 seconds for the second clock is correct yet it said I was just close.
Well, that was harder than expected.
my only issue is that it cares if you are off by 1 minute, meanwhile in the real world a lot of analog clocks have continuously moving minutes and a lot of others have ticking minutes (they only move right at the minute mark).
I don't think jumping minutes are very common at all, right? If it took A. Lange & Söhne inventing it in 1999, it's gotta be rare <a href="https://www.alange-soehne.com/eu-en/manufacture/art-of-watchmaking/flyback-mechanism" rel="nofollow">https://www.alange-soehne.com/eu-en/manufacture/art-of-watch...</a>
That's just presenting improvements to a mechanism; while it isn't common, particularly for watches, and I don't know much about earlier examples, they do seem to exist.<p>For <i>clocks</i>, however, there is the iconic Swiss railway clock [1], which dates back to 1944 and has a jumping minute. For those, however, the jump is actually meaningful in itself, in they're synchronized by a master clock that has a one minute impulse, and the jump is actually the moment of the impulse.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock</a>
Appreciate the feedback! It <i>cares</i>, yeah, but being off-by-a-minute doesn't really dock your overall score very much. I figured without that, a "perfect" would be much less meaningful.
nice!<p>analog.watch
Daily Challenge 2026-07-09<p>Score: 8,946
Time: 39.2s
would be nice if the results also showed the analog watch positions.
love it