New to the the electronics stuff and I'm building a word clock. Recommendations for a microcontroller that has at least 22 outputs (22 words to light up). Something from Arduino? Also need to plug in for power and use an RTC.

There are Arduinos with 22 or more output pins, I don't know anything better but if you're just starting look in the Arduino site.

Thanks
What about individually addressable led strips? What's been your experience?

@dan-pud good idea, try looking at glediator if you haven't heard of it.

you dont need 22 pins, you need a multiplexer

You can do away with 1 output and a (more than) 22 bit shift register. That was how I addressed 60 LEDs with 4 pins(1 out, 1 clk, 1 enable+power, 1 Gnd). Only downside being, you need a separate shift register IC(Combine 6 four-bit shift registers if you want), and that each output would then need 24 clock cycles to output.(but clock cycles are in microseconds so who cares)