@tripledraw What leads me to dislike your hypothesis is mainly that if the trick behind this match will simply be that time difference then I don't think it would have any impact. The rule is that the speaking clock is superior to Yakou's ONLY when it comes to the time limit of 1 minute, which is why what you mentioned earlier about having 4 minutes of extra time added all of a sudden wouldn't work. Now, if you think about how exactly it is that the delay occurs it will start to make more sense: if one clock reaches 12 at midnight in solar time then the sidereal clock should be around 4 minutes behind it, now how is this possible if time flows at the same rate for both clocks? Well, the length of a second (tick) for each clock is slightly different, so that one clock ends up getting slightly further ahead of the other as time passes, and this accumulates to be around 4 minutes eventually. So no, 4 minutes of time can't be added at once, but (talk of my prediction in spoiler tags)
the reason why I don't think this will be the source of the delay/malfunction that I hypothesize will be Baku's trick to make 1 minute of speaking clock time be longer than 1 minute either is because if there is simply just a small difference in the speed at which the two different clocks tick 1 second and this difference accumulates to 4 minutes in 24 hours, then the delay won't be enough to add much time at all when measuring 1 minute, probably not even a second of difference, which is what Yakou will be using his stopwatch to measure, so this wouldn't be very useful.
More prediction talk with comments on last few chapters but no longer directed at tripledraw:
Now, the reason why I think Baku is saying that "there are no safe strategies for me ANYMORE" is that the speaking clock malfunction is planned to be at a certain time, and if he were to use the safe strategy he would screw up the timing of being "D" by the time the clock malfunctions. What bothers me about this, though, is that if there is only a specific time during which he wants to be "D" and he was delaying for this, then why did Souichi checking early (and failing the check) interfere with the timing so much? Oh, while writing this I think I arrived at a satisfactory answer(a bit obvious in hindsight, lol): even though Souichi checking early seems like it simply results in less time being spent until the planned malfunctioning time, it obviously is the opposite for a simple reason: Souichi failed the check by checking early, and thus has to experience a near death. I even mentioned earlier how Baku had calculated the length of a near death to account for his plan, and yet somehow completely forgot that Souichi's near death wasted a lot of time. This would explain Baku's perplexed face, since he did not plan/expect Souichi to fail the check by checking early (he probably thought he would go for the safe strategy and did not want to drop early and let time accumulate) which ended up wasting a lot of time, so Baku can no longer waste time by using the safe strategy if he wants to get the "D" role by the time the malfunction happens, forcing him to gamble by turning early. So from what the last few chapters have shown, my hypothesis still holds for now.
Now, all that being said, Baku is in a really precarious situation... Souichi seems to have gotten into a better mindset once again and I think it will be a matter of time before he figures this stuff out (if I'm right, which is not that likely, but even if it ends up being something else I'm pretty sure Souichi will figure it out eventually), since he'll be able to reverse Baku's plan and deliver a deadly counterattack. I'm glad to see him back though, that mind reading part was insane, I can't even figure out what Douji was doing while looking at the panel he's in, and Souichi figured it out by just thinking about him lmao.
@catx3 Thank you for the great work and batch as always!
A bit off topic, but it's interesting to me how Souichi seems to use (or pretend to use) a rubik's cube as like a tool for concentration, similar to how people IRL (often with some form of disorder) fiddle with objects or devices to help them focus or relieve anxiety/stress. I know this discussion was had a long while back, but it still makes me wonder if Souichi does in fact suffer from some type of disorder (not including the whole memory loss thing). Especially how he sorta conducts himself in general.
Ultimately it probably doesn't really matter though. It's just something I find curious.
I wonder what he means...could someone turn around intentionally early to try and fail a check to empty the cylinder? And then D could drop it early to force them to keep playing. In this way D could try to counteract the "lose on purpose to empty my cylinder" strategy and force them to continue accumulating squandered time until it is too great to overcome. It's the only thing I can think of at surface level and it doesn't make a lot of sense...I don't know why you'd do that instead of just waiting out the entire minute, or just not dropping the handkerchief as D.
Just spitballing, though I think I'm way off base here. Souichi saying there was another reason Baku turned around so early has got me chasing ghosts
@catx3 thank you for you and Team Duwang's hard work as always!
What if the problem is Leader checking at all? If the malfunction/delay is actually far enough away that Leader stands to accumulate a lot of squandered time, and then the malfunction itself cuts the minute short rather than extend it, the fact that Leader was willing to check early with no nudging from Baku would be a huge concern. As was suggested before, I think the clock's malfunction will result in the minute being cut short, perhaps not even being 5 seconds. D would drop (or just leave) the handkerchief, and C would fail the check because they were aiming for the safe strategy of checking at 60s. Leader checking unprompted is what causes Baku's existing plan of that malfunction causing the game winning death to be unsafe.
@BossCrab
Stands to reason that neither player wants to be dead for 3+ minutes in a single go, so once they're close to 2 minutes of squandered time, they may want to fail a check to reset, at which point the opponent can force them to keep going. As you already said though, what's the actual benefit in that...
@Veshv No reason for the malfunction to not go in that direction, but I don't think Baku would risk everything on Souichi never checking early without a particular incentive, if he was maybe gambling on him not checking early when it was necessary, then sure. But if that was the case then he wouldn't be this astonished/nervous I would think.
Thanks for the chapter/batch!!!!!!!!!!
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/usogui/images/8/87/Volume_46_promotional_cover.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200405032438 The artwork that appears in the beginning of the volume is one of my favorites! So here is it in color.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/usogui/images/7/7e/Promotional_image_for_Volume_45.png/revision/latest?cb=20200424162405 And here is the chapter cover in color.
On the last page, "destiny" is the same word as "god's will" https://mangadex.org/chapter/204636/17 (the word is also used by baku and sadakuni in hangman iirc and translated as "fate”. I prefer this chapter's/TD's translation btw).
@299792458 based on the previous chapter when we saw the wall clock pointing at 50 seconds while the bubble said 60 seconds, I completely agree with you that the the two clocks tick at different speed.
Regarding why Baku had to check immediately in this previous round, I think it was to protect this knowledge because doing a safe check would probably reveal that Yakou's stopwatch had only collected 50 seconds instead of the full 60 seconds.
So perhaps he was worried because Leader was testing the early drop, which would reveal the truth of his trick? It seems to me Leader has been trying to confirm the accuracy of his biological clock (middle D (fail) --> middle C --> middle D (again) --> early C --> late D --> late C --> early D).
That would line up with Baku's "no more safe strategy" statement IMO, because checking at 60 secs for the second time would confirm any suspicion regarding the clock discrepancy.
@tripledraw It could be the reason why the speaking clock and the wall clock are not in sync, but as I said, it wouldn't have any impact on a 60 second measurement, the slight difference in speed has just resulted in one clock being only 10 seconds ahead of the other, but it doesn't mean that for every 60 seconds for one clock, the other only counts 50. So yes, they tick at different speeds and this is what ends up accumulating throughout the day which just results in the clocks looking out of sync for us, but the difference isn't noticeable enough for it to make much of a difference in 60 seconds, both clocks would count 60 seconds at about the same rate to us.