# Comment on: Why does the snooze button give 9 minutes

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comment-on-why-does-the-snooze-button-give-9-minutes/425637>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [November 8, 2007, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comment-on-why-does-the-snooze-button-give-9-minutes/425637 "2007-11-08T07:10:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![crazybob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/57b2e6/32.png) [@crazybob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crazybob)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2007, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comment-on-why-does-the-snooze-button-give-9-minutes/425637/1 "2007-11-08T07:10:37Z")

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In [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a991126.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a991126.html), Cecil writes this line:

> [@](#):
>
> On a digital clock, nine is the greatest interval obtainable by advancing some sort of “snooze counter” on the ones column. But why mess with the ones column? Why not put the snooze counter on the tens column and advance that by one?

Why not put the counter on the tens column and ignore the ones column? Because that would get you a snooze which varies from a few seconds to ten minutes.

Let’s have a hypothetical clock which monitors the tens column for snooze. Imagine hitting snooze right as the clock turns to 7:30 - in ten minutes, the tens column will change from a 3 to a 4 and the alarm will go off again. But what if we hit snooze at 7:39? Then the alarm will still go off when the tens column changes to a 4 - in under one minute.

The only way to get a snooze longer than nine minutes would be to monitor both ones and tens columns. That would require additional parts, thereby raising the cost and complexity of the clock.