Get quick and convenient access to just the hints you need for Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships, without staying on our website. Just download a free trial
version of our UHS Reader software and
a copy of these hints. You will get the
same gradual hints you see here -- unlike ordinary cheats or a
walkthrough that can spoil your game.
You can also buy the full version of the UHS Reader
for Windows or macOS. For just $14.95, you get full access to hints for
hundreds of games and 1 year of free updates. You can also search, decode, or print an entire
game's worth of hints at once.
Ask the Author
If you have questions about a puzzle that aren't answered
anywhere in these hints,
you may contact the author.
Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships Hints
How do I solve this puzzle with the squares?
1 of 7: El Toro gave you a cryptic hint to this on page 4 of his journal. Read to the end of this hint for more explicit help.
2 of 7: What he says is, "Two form a perfect square times three, three create four, four makes five." Gee whiz, why can't anyone just tell you what to do?
3 of 7: You may recognize the type of puzzle, however. It's often done with matchsticks, and the trick is to move just two of the matches to make three squares. Give that a try -- click on two of the bars to make them go away, and click on two of the empty spaces to make them appear again.
4 of 7: If you got it right, you pop to an outside view of the puzzle to see it resetting; if you stay where you are and the puzzle resets, you made a mistake, and it's making you start again.
5 of 7: If you got it right, hurray! The puzzle now goes to the next problem. For this one, you have to move three sticks to make four squares.
6 of 7: When you've done that right, you get to do it once more: move four sticks to make five squares. Whew!
7 of 7: There's more than one solution to each of these puzzles, but here's what worked for me:
