diff --git a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md
index d50375b..ff9983f 100644
--- a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md
+++ b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md
@@ -15,9 +15,29 @@
 | **Playtesting** | Three desk passes, all fixes applied: `CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_1.md` (GM chair, seed 4271), `_2.md` (Act Four stress, seed 9314), `_3.md` (player chair, contrarian, seed 5580). Twenty-three fixes plus one post-pass. |
 | **What it is** | A **convention one-shot**, decided 13 September 2026. It ends in the slot; there is no second session and the text must not promise one. |
 | **Where it runs** | **Contingency 2027 — Sunday 31 January 2027, afternoon** (slot 9), Searles Leisure Resort, Hunstanton. |
-| **Runtime** | 4h00 including a break. Desk pass 1 ran 4:25; the **Pacing Note** carries ~25 minutes of pre-written cuts. Take them as the default. |
+| **Runtime** | 4h00 including a break. Desk pass 1 ran 4:25; the **Pacing Note** carries ~25 minutes of pre-written cuts. Take them as the default. **⚠ That is 20 minutes over the house budget** — see below. |
 | **Players** | 4–6 from the duty roster. The cast is declared in the Casting section and the build enforces it. |
 
+### ⚠ It runs 20 minutes long against the house budget
+
+The house standard is **3h30 of play** inside the four-hour slot plus a ten-minute
+break — about **3h40 wall clock**, against roughly 3h15 of actual content. This
+document budgets **4h00**, which is the whole slot with nothing either side.
+
+**Taking every pre-written cut in the Pacing Note lands it at 4:00, not 3:40.** So the
+cuts are not optional slack, they are the baseline, and there is still no margin for a
+table that talks. Desk pass 1 ran 4:25 uncut.
+
+Two honest ways out, and it has not been decided which:
+
+- **Find another 20 minutes.** Act Two is 65 minutes and is the likeliest source; the
+  Pacing Note already knows where its own fat is.
+- **Declare it a deliberate exception** and run it in a slot with nothing after it —
+  which, at Contingency 2027, it has: Sunday afternoon, with only a reserve behind it.
+
+Until that is settled, **a GM running this to time should assume they will overrun**
+and should take the cuts from the start rather than deciding at the break.
+
 ### The three things that are not obvious
 
 Read GM ESSENTIALS in full — this is only what a GM most often discovers too late.