04:00 One possible answer is, the "15 minutes slow" figure is inaccuracy in the question builder and is actually correct. The quarter past hour explanation overrules the "15 minutes slow". My answer assumes this. I translated the "quarter past hour" which might be ambiguous (quarter past what hour?) and decided to assume it refers to quarter past four. The seconds don't matter, so I assumed ending on the hour too for convenience and based on the lack of exact specificim in minutes for me to know otherwise. My first assumption was the quarter past "quart past" meaning refers to 4:15 in my above answer. But the second quarter phrase is distinctly clear as "quarter past an hour", so this leads me to assume "quarter past" together means 15 minutes later on the clock face above 3:45. This assumption is further supported by the text referring to the time in percentages, so the quarter number makes more sense after hours than seconds. Therefore I work out as: -_Tick_ on the clock face: 3:45 - Actual time minus thirty minutes from clock face: 3:30 - One quarter plus the actual time: 4:00 I may update this answer if or whenalternative logic explanations come up.