Madison Clock Puzzle Guide - Safe Combination And Walkthrough

Clocks always seem to be the hobby of madmen. An obsession with time would be enough to make anyone crack. Albert Maxwell, the grandfather in Madison, is no exception. Once you have the clock key and can descend into the house’s third(!?) separate basement, you’ll find what he was up to in his final days. But what could they mean? Let us tell you. Here's how to solve the Madison clock puzzle.

Note: Madison features changing puzzles for different playthroughs, so the specifics of solving this puzzle may change, but the method will be the same.

Where To Find Your Tools

Before you can start mucking around with time itself, you’re going to need an important item. You’ve probably noticed the cuckoo clocks scattered around the house. Interacting with them prompts you for an item you won’t get your hands on until you have the clock key. The clock key unlocks the clock door, obviously. Once you’re in the workshop, you’ll need to find a notebook in one of the drawers near the far corner of the room.

The notebook gives two instructions, “3 left. 12…” If you’ve visited the bathroom at any point, you’ll probably remember a similar notebook. Reading it, you get the message, “... Right. 8 left.” Put these together and you have the combination of a safe: 3 left, 12 right, 8 left. This is used on the green safe in your grandfather’s office. Opening that, you’ll find a clock with two nubs on the back of it.

Observing The Clues

The clock you found in the safe matches the pattern on the cuckoo clocks that have been following you around. If you place it in one of them, you’ll find that a pair of bars snap closed on it, while the other set releases its other face. This means that you can take any cuckoo clock face, but only move one at a time.

That brings us back to the basement. Observe the clocks and you may notice that all the faces on a particular wall are in sync. That is to say, if you face the stairs, all the clocks in that direction will say 4:20. Face the door on the other end and they all read 1:30. The cuckoo clocks, on the other hand, will read something entirely different.

Interpreting The Puzzle

The goal of this puzzle is to make all the cuckoo clocks match the time on the walls behind them. This requires a bit of backtracking, as none of those clock faces are in the room with you. You will have to remember the location of all the cuckoo clocks throughout the house, as those are the only place you’ll find the pertinent clock faces.

You’ll then have to bring them one at a time back to the workshop to slot them. Then you take the released clock face to the next one. Thankfully, it’s not a very big house, but it’s still a lot of backtracking.

The Solution

If your memory is full and you can’t remember where those cuckoo clocks are, here are their locations: The first hallway, hanging on the wall in the kitchen, right outside your grandfather’s office, and in the attic. Once again, you can’t carry more than one at a time, so if you read this whole guide in its entirety before attempting the puzzle, you can save yourself some walking and grab the 4:20 clock near the office directly after you receive the first clock face from the safe.

As for where the clocks go, here are the times starting at the wall with the locked door and going clockwise: 1:30, 5:10, 4:20, and 6:40. Put the corresponding clock faces in the correct spots, and the entire room will start going crazy. Then nothing happens. The clock on the door will spin wildly, but the door is still locked. Take a picture of it, not only will it last longer, but that will cause the door to open. Inside the closet is yet another clock. This one hangs from a hook and you will need it for the puzzle in dad’s room.

When you finish this conundrum, you'll be led directly into another: the concrete block puzzle.