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Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships Hints
What do I do with the ropes and pulleys?
1 of 9: You can only complete this puzzle once you have solved the puzzle at Shark Cove and found the chest.
3 of 9: The object of this puzzle is to lift the heavy rock at the right of the pulley array by pulling a rope that has been stretched between the various pulleys. Read to the end of this hint for exact instructions on how to do this.
4 of 9: El Toro's journal, found in the chest at Shark Cove, will help you. On the fourth page of El Toro's journal in the top right hand corner, you will see a diagram of the pulley system. This diagram is the key to solving this puzzle.
5 of 9: The diagram shows that you need 30 feet of rope remaining to lift the rock. In the lower right corner of the game, it shows that we start out with 50 feet of rope, and it also tells you how many feet run between each pair of pulleys. So your task is to manipulate those numbers to come up with exactly 20 feet.
6 of 9: Using El Toro's diagram of the pulleys, you'll notice that the loose end of the rope always hangs off of the D pulley. So you need to end with D.
7 of 9: Also, see those little black smudges on the rock? Those are sharp little rocks embedded in the larger rock. If your rope stretches across one of those, it will break when you pull on it. That means that, for example, you can't go from D to C without shearing the rope.
8 of 9: Finally, you may have noticed that pulleys A and C have only one notch on them, while B and D have three. When you play around with it, you will see that you can stretch rope to A and C only once but B and D three times.
9 of 9: There may be more than one way to solve this puzzle, but here's one that I know works:
