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Nancy Drew 18: The Phantom of Venice Hints
How and when do I play chess on the computer?
1 of 12: "Gina's Chessboard Server" will continue to be closed for maintenance until someone in the game tells you to contact Gina.
2 of 12: After you get in to see Enrico Tazza, he'll give you an assignment and tell you to talk to Gina for help with the assignment.
3 of 12: The good news here is that you're not really going to play chess. (Thank goodness!) Instead, you're going to be using the chess moves to tell Gina about the place you want to break into. That's Palazzo Zattere, in case you forgot.
4 of 12: First, go to the news kiosk and buy a book about chess notation. It's only four pages, so it won't take long to read.
5 of 12: As you saw if you looked at the chess games in the computer's trash, Enrico uses the Krolmeister notation. And so he does -- but not to play chess.
6 of 12: Let's take a quick look at Enrico's shortest game, the one on January 24. Ignore the first letter of each move and just look at the last two; so in the first move, BG4, the only part we want is G4.
7 of 12: Now double up the two chess boards, the standard notation one and the Krolmeister one. If you look at the standard notation spot on the Krolmeister board, G4 translates to the letter G. See if you can translate the rest of the game this way.
8 of 12: The game translates to the word "GERVASE" -- and if you check with the info in the ATM machine, a chalice was stolen from St. Gervase on January 25. Wow!
9 of 12: So what you're going to do is first translate "Palazzo Zattere" from the Krolmeister board into standard chess notation. After you put one of the letters of the conventional chess pieces in front of each one (B, P, K, Q, N, R), you'll then get onto Gina's Chessboard Server and enter the moves as if you were playing a game.
10 of 12: For example, the first letter is P. In the Krolmeister board, it's in the last column, the third row up from the bottom. That same position on the conventional board is H3. So the first "move" you need to make needs to end with H3 -- BH3, or KH3, or NH3, or whatever. When you enter this move, Nancy will say, "P." That tells you you got it right.
11 of 12: Here are the "moves" you need to enter to give Gina the message:
12 of 12: If you've done it right, Gina will say "Checkmate!" and give you instructions. If she doesn't say that, it means you made a typing mistake (like I did about fifteen times). Back away from the computer, sigh heavily, and start over.
