The saga of the clock kid, now entering its second month, keeps on ticking.

In September, Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old freshman at Irving MacArthur High in Irving, Tex., was arrested for building a device thought to be a bomb until it turned out to be a clock. Ahmed is Muslim, and accused his school of anti-Muslim bigotry. And, most memorably, he was invited to the White House, among many other places, as right-wing commentators seethed.

But the media had more questions. How had a problem seemingly easily explained in a classroom with a few words — It might look like something else, but it’s a clock — ended in Ahmed’s arrest? And, well, why didn’t Ahmed’s clock look like a clock?