Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy Hints

"Ersatz Quidnuncs"

  • 1 of 8: This is the most complicated of the four to unravel. You might want to start with one of the others, unless you just like frustration. As always, read to the end of this hint if you just want the answer.
  • 2 of 8: Okay. This one says, "Two simple words to contain such wisdom. But ..." and then it goes off into a long series of instructions. Clearly, the number of this one is 2.
  • 3 of 8: The two words referred to here are mostly likely the words of the title, "ersatz" and "quidnuncs." (Incidentally, "ersatz" means phony and "quidnunc" means a busybody, so the title means "Phony Busybodies." Where can I get a copy?)
  • 4 of 8: What you're going to do is take those two words and then follow all the instructions very carefully. When you get to the end, you'll have a short phrase that will tell you what letter you want.
  • 5 of 8: There are a couple of ways to do this. You can take a big piece of paper, write "ERSATZQUIDNUNCS" at the top and just keep making the changes, or you can use a word processing program like Word and do it there.
  • 6 of 8: In any case, here are the changes you should be making:
  • 7 of 8: When you're done, you should have "SPUNTOQWILLDO" -- or if you change the spacing, you get, "Spun to Q will do." So the letter here is Q.
  • 8 of 8: And the answer is 2, Q.