My apologies to anyone who read that title too fast and thought this has something to do with a 12-inch cock, or 12 cocks, or anything of that nature. But this is great news for people who are easily wowed by markers being used to show surprising clock facts. It also proves Tik Tok can be educational! Take that, everyone who has seriously questioned how much time I spend on Tik Tok. I now know that all almost the numbers on a clock add up to twelve. What I plan on doing with that information remains to be seen, but for now let’s all gasp at this numerology miracle.
Tik Tok user @oldschoollover recently uploaded the following video in which she connected the dots, or rather numbers. She conducted a highly scientific experiment using the assistance of a Sharpie and a quickly-drawn clock face taped to an old binder to show that everything adds up to 12. By drawing a horizontal line across the clock face, she discovers that the numbers on the left and the numbers on the right are all just combinations of the number 12. 11 and 1, boom – 12. 10 and 2, look at that – 12. And so on, and so forth, until you get down to 6, which stands alone at the bottom. But! If you draw a line through the 6, you’ve effectively made two sixes, and those two sixes add up to twelve. Jim Carrey in The Number 23 who??
Now, @oldschoollover isn’t the first person to make this connection. The internet has been asking this same clock face question for years, and a Reddit user explains the phenomenon as follows:
“There’s nothing special going on. You’re just adding and subtracting 1 each iteration. This would work for any arbitrary n number of clock positions. 1 + (n-1), 2 + (n-2), 3 + (n-3), etc. So this is merely a consequence of how you’ve chosen to interpret opposing numbers.”
That’s far too much math for me, so I’m going to continue to believe it’s clock witchcraft. And I just realized that it works if you subtract the numbers diagonally too, except the answer is always going to be six. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed that my Tomy Hoot Owl Answer Clock didn’t teach me this. I’m starting to question his academic credentials.
Pic: YouTube