Nancy Drew 22: Trail of the Twister Hints

How do I fix the sprinklers?

  • 1 of 9: To find the sprinkler controls, go right as you leave the house and head for the corn field. To the right of the scarecrow, there's a greenish box in the ground; open it to find the sprinkler controls.
  • 2 of 9: As the instructions say, what you're trying to do here is open the valves (six for Juniors, eight for Seniors) so that none of them are in the same vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line. Read to the end of this hint for a layout that works.
  • 3 of 9: You may have seen this same puzzle in other places using a chess board; in its classic form, it's called the Eight Queens puzzle, and the task is to place eight queens on the board so that none of them can take any of the others.
  • 4 of 9: When you're done, you'll have one valve turned on in each column, and there will also be one in each row.
  • 5 of 9: Let's start by turning on the first valve in the bottom row, left column. That row and column are now used, so put the next one in the second column, two from the bottom --
  • 6 of 9: -- but that runs into the first valve's diagonal line, so put it three from the bottom. Is this a pattern you can use?
  • 7 of 9: Try the next one in the third column, three up from the second one. Aha, we're onto something!
  • 8 of 9: This system works quite well for the Junior puzzle. For the Senior puzzle, you'll have to do some tinkering with the second half of the board to get it to work.
  • 9 of 9: There are probably other solutions, but here's what worked for me: