Nancy Drew 24: The Captive Curse Hints

How do I get into the wall safe?

  • 1 of 13: If you zoom in on the wall to the left of Karl's desk, you find that there's a locked panel there. The scrollwork at right conceals a keypad, but Karl has a hissy fit if you touch it. So the first step is to get him out of the office.
  • 2 of 13: Once he's gone, look at it again, and you still don't know the combination to unlock it. You need something you can find in Karl's desk.
  • 3 of 13: And once you get into his desk, the combination is inside the locked day planner.
  • 4 of 13: And now the fun starts. The pages are all in German, and even translated they don't tell you anything interesting. But what are those odd notations he's got written in the margins? (Read to the end of this hint for the combination to the wall safe.)
  • 5 of 13: Write down the notations -- the first is "4. Little Snow White" written in blue -- and see if they suggest anything.
  • 6 of 13: They're all fairy tales, they're in different colors, and there are five of them. That must mean those five fairy tales represent the five numbers of the safe combination. Somehow.
  • 7 of 13: You've seen references to those fairy tales in this game, in this very room. After all, the characters in Karl's game are all based on characters from Grimm's fairy tales, aren't they?
  • 8 of 13: Let's take the first one, Little Snow White. Go to the "Raid Game Guide" book under the card display and look for a reference to Little Snow White.
  • 9 of 13: Aha, there it is -- the Enchanted Mirror. But what does the fact that the name was written in blue mean?
  • 10 of 13: The blue number on the cards indicates that character's magic level. The Enchanted Mirror's magic level is 11. Therefore, the fourth number in the combination is 11.
  • 11 of 13: Go through all the notations like that to get this series of numbers --
  • 12 of 13: 5 - 13 - 15 - 11 - 9. But there aren't that many spaces here, so how do we enter them? One at a time.
  • 13 of 13: That is, push the 5 button and then the Enter key on the keypad, and a green light lights up on the top of the keypad. Enter a 13 and push Enter, and the second light comes on. When you get to the end, the safe pops open. Yay! (But this won't work until you've at least gotten into Karl's locked desk and day planner, so don't bother till then.)