diff --git a/test/programs/time.flan b/test/programs/time.flan
index 6836c24..cea0388 100644
--- a/test/programs/time.flan
+++ b/test/programs/time.flan
@@ -19,10 +19,15 @@
     (println (>= t2 t1)))
 
   ;; And the origin is the first read rather than boot, so the first readings
-  ;; a program takes are small. Bounded rather than pinned: the number is
-  ;; whatever this process spent between the calls above and this one, which
-  ;; is not a second on any machine that can run the suite at all.
-  (println (< (monotonic-ns) ns-per-second))
+  ;; a program takes are small. Bounded rather than pinned, and the bound is
+  ;; deliberately loose: what separates this clock from a boot-relative one is
+  ;; hours, so a minute proves it and a second only proved it on hardware. The
+  ;; tighter bound was a reading after all — memcheck runs this program on a
+  ;; synthetic CPU tens of times slower than the metal, the second genuinely
+  ;; elapsed, and the line went false under a tool that has nothing to say
+  ;; about clocks. A minute is past anything a simulator adds and still short
+  ;; of the smallest thing the assertion is meant to catch.
+  (println (< (monotonic-ns) (* 60 ns-per-second)))
 
   ;; The f64 face is the i64 one divided, and what is checked is that the two
   ;; describe the same instant: a later reading in seconds is at or past an