This is version 2 of the nightstand-sized version of the word clock that I've been working on.  You can see version 1 on the left, and version 2 on the right.  As you can see, I definitely achieved my goal of making it a lot less deep!  The new one is slightly less than an inch and a half deep.  I redesigned the circuit for the new version to eliminate the separate Arduino and switched to board-mounted buttons (instead of the panel-mounted buttons the old one used).  I also changed the way I did the light-separation grid to make it less thick.  All of those changed made a huge difference in the size, as the first version was almost three and a half inches deep.