In Suzanne Collins’s Catching Fire, the arena’s clock-like feature is known simply as the clock.
The 75th Hunger Games arena is designed as a circular tropical environment divided into sections. Its hazards activate at specific times, making the arena function like a giant clock. Each wedge contains a different threat, including poisonous fog, blood rain, carnivorous monkeys and a deadly lightning strike.
The feature is essential to the escape plan developed by several tributes. Wiress recognizes the arena’s pattern by repeating the word “clock,” while Beetee works out how the lightning can be used against the force field surrounding the arena.
The clock is not the Cornucopia, the central supply structure where the Games begin. Catching Fire, the second novel in the trilogy, was published in 2009 and follows the aftermath of Katniss’s first Games.