Playdate Is Helping Big Ben Ring On Time

Sometimes, gamers find each other in the most unexpected places. Today, we learned that there’s a geeky gaming cameo in the National Geographic travel show Best of the World with Antoni Porowski. During the Queer Eye alum’s time in London, he visited Big Ben with Andrew Strangeway, a clock mechanic for the Houses of Parliament. Apparently, Strangeway has programmed his Playdate to help check the timing for the iconic clocktower’s bells to ring. The Playdate isn’t a new tool in the clock mechanic’s arsenal either. An earlier video of him and a colleague showed the Playdate in use during preparations at Big Ben to ring in 2025 on New Year’s Eve.

small handheld. big ben.

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— Playdate (@play.date) 2026-07-09T00:29:53.372Z

Playdate posted about the most recent cameo on Bluesky. The company added, “for real, though, this is the kind of surprising magic that happens when you make hardware that’s easy to program for, sideloadable, and with a nice SDK!” We’ve still loved playing with this wildly inventive little yellow machine over the years, and it’s amazing to see it being used for completely non-gaming purposes out in the wild.