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Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships Hints

I can't read this book!

  • 1 of 8: This book is El Toro's journal, and it's found in the chest at Shark Cove.
  • 2 of 8: When you first open it, you see that the book is filled with weird symbols instead of letters. Click on one of the pages to zoom in closer.
  • 3 of 8: Luckily for us, this is a simple substitution cipher. That is, he's using symbols instead of letters; all you have to do is figure out which symbol he's substituted for which letter. When you click on a symbol, that symbol and the others like it are highlighted. Then you can pick a letter to substitute for that symbol. Read to the very end of this hint to see the complete translation of each page.
  • 4 of 8: You can just pick random letters, but it's actually a lot easier to figure out what word a group of symbols might be. For example, a one-letter word HAS to be either "a" or "I", which gives you a place to start. A three-letter word repeated many times is often "the." The most common letters in English are e, t, a, o, i, and n, in that order.
  • 5 of 8: If you're having trouble getting started, here are the first couple words on each page to give you a running start:
  • 6 of 8: And here are the full translations:
  • 7 of 8: After you've translated it, you will notice that there are still some parts of the book not translated, so parts of the story are still unreadable.
  • 8 of 8: Incidentally, it's very important that you flip through the entire book after you've got it all decoded. Even if you think you got it all, Nancy won't really digest it until you do this.