Try these puzzlers if you're bored with your watch

Tim Hornyak | Nov 12, 2009

(Credit: Tokyoflash)

Tokyoflash's latest series of slick designer wristwatches features lightweight aluminum construction, LED lights, and maddeningly confusing time displays.

The Kisai series inherits the qualities of previous incomprehensible Tokyoflash timepieces such as the Fire and the Pleasure Seeker, namely that users must spend hours deciphering their alien time-reckoning systems.

They certainly put one's brain to work. The Sensai model (right), which weighs 72g and sells for about US$233, tells the time after a button on its right side is pushed. The button first initiates a circular animation of colored LEDs.

When the animation stops, the hour is shown according to the number of red LEDs. So far, so good. When it comes to minutes, things get tricky.

Eleven green LEDs represent five-minute groups and four yellow LEDs represent single minutes. So, three green, two red, and two yellow equals 3:12. Clear as mud? There's a demo here.

To watch an explanation of how another Kisai model works, click the vid below (the speaker calls the watch a "friend maker").

Now if only Tokyoflash could come up with an impenetrable Mayan Apocalypse Watch, they'd corner the market for the 2012 doomsday set.