Tickwell

The day Tickwell finally explained all this, a young squirrel named Nutkin was having a truly terrible time. At home, Nutkin had been practicing on a different game, one with a big glowing clock in the corner of the screen that counted upward, second after second after second, the entire time you played.

"I keep making mistakes," Nutkin said miserably, tail twitching back and forth. "I see the clock climbing and climbing, and I start to rush, and then I click the wrong square, and I lose. Every single time."

Tickwell nodded slowly, as if he'd heard this exact story many times before. "The clock was loud," he said.

"It isn't loud," said Nutkin, puzzled. "It doesn't even make a sound."

"It's loud inside your head," said Tickwell gently. "When you can watch the seconds going by, part of your mind is always watching the clock instead of the board. It pulls at you, a little tug every second. It keeps whispering hurry, hurry, hurry. And hurrying is exactly how mistakes happen, because a hurried mind skips the checking step. It clicks before it proves."

He picked up his pocket watch and held it up for Nutkin to see, still closed tight. "In the League, your time is never shown to you while you play. The League keeps track of it quietly in the background, so nothing is lost. But it never ticks in front of you. You only get to see your time after you've finished the whole board."

Nutkin's eyes went wide. "So I can just... think? For as long as I need?"

"You can just think," said Tickwell, with a lazy, easy smile. "Find your proofs. Check your flags before you chord. Take your time over the tricky parts, the ones where two numbers have to be read together. And then, when the very last square opens, you get to find out how fast you were. The speed comes at the end. It doesn't get to barge into the middle."

Nutkin tried a League board. There was no clock glowing in the corner. At first it felt strange, almost too quiet, like a room where a ticking clock has suddenly stopped. And then, slowly, it started to feel good. Nutkin looked carefully at each number, found the proofs one at a time, never rushed, never panicked, never clicked a square without asking what the numbers proved. The board cleared completely, without a single mistake.

Only then did the time appear. It wasn't the fastest time in the valley. But Nutkin had finished an entire board for the first time in weeks, and that felt wonderful.

"Here's the funny part," said Tickwell, finally flipping open his watch and glancing at it. "When you stop rushing, you usually end up faster anyway. A mistake costs you far more time than careful thinking ever does. You lose the whole board, and have to start again from nothing. Calm hands turn out to be quick hands, in the end. The speed grows out of the care, not the other way around."

"And my time is just for me?" Nutkin asked.