What is my clock telling me to do?

Question

My two year old played with my calendar clock, and while it still shows the correct time, now it tells me my name, where I work, and also something I should do, which I'd rather not. What is it?

Hint 1

The clock is a fairly cheap device available globally - I own and use it in real life, it is operating as designed and not broken in any way

Hint 2

What I should do, my place of work, and my name show up sequentially, not at the same time (and are not my real life info)

Hint 3

What I should do, my place of work, and my name show up every week

Hint 4

It's showing my name today, showed my place of work yesterday, and what I should do two days ago. Bonus: it'll show my wife's name in two days.

Hint 5

All of this repeats every week.

Hint 6

The solution has only to do with the display that shows the current day of the week. It is not related to segment displays.

I don't have a whole answer yet, but is your name rot13(Wnfba) by any chance? I can see how the calendar feature might cause that to appear... — Darrel Hoffman, Jul 31 '19 at 20:31
@DarrelHoffman no - I'm preparing some hints for the question — knabar, Aug 01 '19 at 05:00
I can't shake off the sensation that your name is May and it's something to do with April 30th and 1st of May. Am I way off? — Konrad Viltersten, Aug 01 '19 at 10:10
@KonradViltersten My name rot13(qbrf unir guerr yrggref) but the solution has nothing to do with rot13(fcrpvsvp qngrf, nf Uvag 5 rkcynvaf) — knabar, Aug 01 '19 at 13:17
@KonradViltersten that is a coded message, you can decode it here https://rot13.com/ They usually use this to not spoil things for other people while reading the comments. — ihavenoidea, Aug 02 '19 at 14:20

score 32 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 28 '20 at 20:32

32

If a 2 year old played with your clock, it could have

changed the display language to German (see the language tag)

With your hints given

- it shows up once in a week
- it shows up sequentially.
so I think we are searching weekday names that match "Name, Place of work, Do something"
German Weekdays:
Montag (Monday)
Dienstag (Tuesday)
Mittwoch (Wednesday)
Donnerstag (Thursday)
Freitag (Friday)
Samstag (Saturday)
Sonntag (Sunday)
Mostly abbreviated with the first three letters

Then let us pick a name

Don from Donnerstag (Thursday)

Pick a place of work

MIT from Mittwoch (Wednesday)

Pick something you don't wanna do

Die from Dienstag (Tuesday)

And bonus, your wife's name

Sam from Samstag (Saturday)

And why wasn't it there before?

The English abbreviations would be different, so they started to show after your child changed the language of the clock

edited Apr 28 '20 at 20:32

Glorfindel

28,033
9
96
142

answered Jul 31 '19 at 09:42

Bananenkopp

2,506
9
15

Translate the numbers into German and find the name of an athletic gear company – user3294068 Jul 31 '19 at 14:00
@user3294068 Found it, you mean rot13(Qervffvt Nguyrgvp). I dont think that numbers are written out on a calender clock. So the number would be there before in english too. – Bananenkopp Jul 31 '19 at 14:45
@user3294068 rot13(Trezna qbrf cynl vagb gur fbyhgvba, ohg vg'f zhpu zber fgenvtugsbejneq) – knabar Jul 31 '19 at 15:32
This has to be it. Nice job! – Jafe Aug 01 '19 at 09:31
That's ingenious. rot13(Ohg V nyjnlf pevatr jura V frr gur Trezna jrrxqnlf nooerivngrq gb guerr yrggref vafgrnq bs whfg gjb.) – M Oehm Aug 01 '19 at 10:29
This is what I had in mind, congrats! – knabar Aug 02 '19 at 08:10
2

So after showing the wife's name, it then tells us who was responsible for all this? – Admiral Jota Aug 05 '19 at 14:12

score 28 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 31 '19 at 09:46

28

I think that the calendar clock is now looking like this:

Because your 2-year old put it upside down, when it was displaying 09:31:0X (the X is not important at all)

You name is

DIEGO
(upside down 09310 - 0 = "D", 1 = "I", 3 = "E", 9 = "G", 0 = "O")

You work at

San Diego

It tells you to

DIE - which you should do eventually, but you would rather not
GO - you should go somewhere, but you don't want to

answered Jul 31 '19 at 09:46

oleslaw

6,926
1
29
51

7

Good guess, but the solution I'm looking for does involve the "calendar" component of the clock. Upvote for getting very close to the right solution though! – knabar Jul 31 '19 at 09:51

score 23 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 01 '19 at 05:43

23

If the time and date are

7:11 on Wednesday, July 10

the clock would be showing

your place of work, 7-Eleven (7:11),
your name, Julio (Jul 10),
and something you'd rather not do: Wed.

answered Aug 01 '19 at 05:43

Jafe

78,615
8
162
614

Great one! Didn't think there would be so many possible answers. The one I was thinking of is still out there, also see the hints I added. – knabar Aug 01 '19 at 06:05
But what did the two year old do with the clock? – Bananenkopp Aug 01 '19 at 07:32

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 01 '19 at 07:46

Another (not so) creative answer:

The lines on a clock change as follows:
- Wednesday (that's your name)
- 8.1 1:15 (on a 7-segment display it can be easily read as BILLS - you should pay bills, but definitely do not want to do this)
- 99°F (reads as GGF, your workplace) - this clock is equipped by a temperature sensor (this is not uncommon), and your 2-year-old heated the clock with her hands while playing (99°F, or 37.2°C, is close to body temperature)

Unfortunately

today is really August 1, but not Wednesday.

What is my clock telling me to do?

4 Answers4