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+# ❔ The clock origin is not measurable from a boot capture — the title is not in one
+
+**Status: ❔ blocked, with the reach stated.** 2026-09-01. Instrument: ⟨capture⟩ ×3.
+Recorded rather than worked around, per *"do not improvise around a blocker"*.
+
+---
+
+## What I set out to do
+
+The clock **origin** is the last surviving candidate for play-test finding 3.
+Every quantity in today's account is a ratio or a count, and **a common offset
+survives all of them** — if the port's clock starts at a different moment from the
+game's, every interval matches and the screen still arrives late.
+
+Now that the clock is known to advance **1 unit per present**, the origin is
+directly measurable as a *count*: observe the plate at a known declared alpha
+(the `214 → 236` ramp gives `t` to within one unit), count presents back to the
+first present on which the title draws anything, and the difference is the title's
+clock value at its own first draw. Zero means the clock starts when the screen
+does; anything else is the offset a port must author.
+
+**No capture I have contains the plate, or the title at all.**
+
+## What the boot actually does, measured three times
+
+| capture | publisher splash | developer splash | first movie frame |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| boot 1 | presents 1…219 (**219**) | 224…409 (**186**) | 422 |
+| boot 2 | 1…228 (**228**) | 234…418 (**185**) | 429 |
+| `--framerate_limit=30` | 1…244 (**244**) | 250…453 (**204**) | 463 |
+
+**Two splashes, then the attract movie. There is no title segment.** The two
+UI-drawing segments are the publisher and developer splashes — identified by
+their quad rects and by dwells matching `boot-order-and-splash-dwell.md` — and the
+next thing to draw is the movie's luma plane.
+
+📌 **This is not a new failure; it re-frames an old one as expected.** The corpus
+records *"three runs, two locales, two launch paths, ~35 minutes of emulator time,
+no interactive title"*, and treats it as an unexplained blocker. The reason is
+plainer than it looked: `MISSION.md`'s own boot order is **splash → intro video →
+title**, `ADV.wmv` is **137.7 s** ⟨disc⟩, and a 600-present capture at ~50
+presents/s is **~12 s**. The title is on the far side of a two-minute movie. A
+capture that never reaches it is behaving correctly.
+
+⚠️ These runs use `NOTAP=1`, which is what the splash work needed and is exactly
+what prevents skipping the movie.
+
+## What would settle it, and neither is free
+
+1. **Tap Ⓐ to skip the movie, then capture the title.** `ui_draw_capture.sh`
+   already taps while a movie plays when `NOTAP` is unset. The risk is documented
+   in that script's own header: a stray Ⓐ on the *title* sends the guest into the
+   save-data probe, which crashed it on 2026-08-18.
+2. **Capture through the whole movie** — ~137 s at ~50 presents/s is **~6 900
+   presents**, against the 600 these runs used. `FRAMES` and `MAXDRAWS` both scale;
+   the log would be ~15 MB, which is fine.
+
+Option 2 needs no pad input and cannot crash the guest, so it is the one to run.
+I did not run it: it is a single capture but a long one, and I would rather
+pre-register the origin prediction first than start a 3-minute capture at the end
+of an iteration.
+
+## The prediction, so the next run is not exploratory
+
+Under `1 unit per present`, if the title's clock starts on its first drawn
+present, then the plate's `a = 17` (first ramp step, `t = 215`) must land
+**215 presents** after the title's first draw, and `a = 255` at **236**. Any
+consistent shortfall is the origin offset, in units, directly.
+
+⚠️ And there is a second reading to keep open: the corpus's two 2026-08-29 runs
+measured *settle → plate* at 2.13 s with the title persisting long enough to show
+it, which these untapped runs do not. Whether the boot title and the post-movie
+title are the same screen with the same clock is **not established**, and the
+origin may differ between them.
+
+## Reach
+
+⟨capture⟩ ×3, one machine, English locale, `NOTAP=1`, 600 presents. The negative
+is specific: **within the first ~460 presents of boot, the title does not draw.**
+It says nothing about what happens after the attract movie, which is precisely
+where the answer is.