Nancy Drew: Shadow at the Water's Edge Quiz

Answer: P.G. Krolmeister

In the 22nd game of the Nancy Drew series "Trail of the Twister", Nancy solves a case in Oklahoma, where someone is sabotaging a team of storm chasers. She was asked to investigate this case by P.G. Krolmeister, an eccentric owner of a company that produces various appliances, including storm chasing equipment. As a reward for solving the case P.G. gives her a trip to Kyoto, Japan. She will stay here at a traditional Japanese inn, called the Ryokan Hiei. The product name Krolmeister appears in several Nancy Drew games. They make almost everything you can think of, including the world famous Krolmeister Salad Cannon. The security system at the ryokan is also made by Krolmeister.

Ned Nickerson is Nancy's boyfriend. He does not feature in "Shadow at the Water's Edge" though. Bill Kessler is one of the guests at Icicle Creek Lodge in "The White Wolf of Icicle Creek". Alexei Markovic is an antique shop owner and former child detective appearing in "Alibi in Ashes".

Answer: A portrait falls to the floor

When Nancy first enters the ryokan, she is greeted by Miwako and her grandmother Takae, both part of the Shimizu family that has owned the ryokan for a long time, passing it on to the eldest daughter in the family each time. As soon as Nancy introduces herself, a portrait falls to the floor. Takae is very shocked and tells Miwako to send Nancy away, because "she does not want her here". The portrait is one of the remaining images of Kasumi Shimizu, Takae's daughter and Miwako's mother. She died in a tragic accident. During the game Nancy will find more about what happened with Kasumi, as her ghost is said to haunt the ryokan. Nancy will also help the ryokan's handyman Rentaro repair the portrait later, which turns into a tricky puzzle where a series of wires need to be untangled, so they do not cross each other.

Later on in the game, the mirror in the baths of the ryokan will shatter in a very spooky scene, where Nancy sees a ghost in the mirror that is not actually in the room with her. Miwako does own a robotic cat called Suki. You can give various commands to the cat. If the cat is in guard mode, it will attack if needed, as Nancy finds out when she tries to snoop at Miwako's desk after hours. During the course of the game Nancy will witness two angry guests leaving. Even though the ryokan is a ghost hunter hotspot, many people can't stand the spooky atmosphere there. Eventually Nancy is the only guest left.

Answer: Calligraphy

When Miwako gives Nancy the key to her room, she explains that her grandmother gives lessons in the traditional Japanese arts in the cultural room. When Nancy visits the room, Takae apologizes for being slightly rude to her at the front desk. She introduces Nancy to calligraphy. Nancy learns how to write her name in Katakana, a Japanese writing system. When she finishes this puzzle, Takae says she will have it brought to her room, after it has time to dry. Later on in the game, Nancy finds that the writing she has done, has turned red, a sign of bad luck in Japan. Somebody is obviously trying to scare her.

On the second day, Takae teaches Nancy how to do origami. She will be shown several figures that are just a few folds from being completed and needs to match them to the finished product. Learning about the various folds proves useful for a later puzzle, where Nancy has to figure out how to fold a paper she has found in the garden. The picture turns out to look like a bamboo. This tells Nancy where to go in the garden to find out more.

On the third day Nancy is introduced to the Japanese tea ceremony. Takae shows here what the various items used are called and Nancy will have to put the items in their proper place. The tea pot, or the furo, is quite useful later on in the game, when Nancy needs steam to open up an envelope she found in a box on Miwako's desk. She uses the tea pot on the fire pit in the lobby to create the steam. In the envelope is the password to Miwako's computer.

It is the eldest daughter of Takae, Yumi, that owns a bento stand near the Matsue train station, where currently a big technology expo is being held. Nancy's friends Bess Marvin and George Fayne are at this convention and meet up with Yumi. During the game Nancy will also go and meet Yumi, who then introduces her to the art of bento, a home-packed meal from Japan. As the eldest daughter Yumi will have to take over the ryokan, as tradition prescribes. She is not very keen on doing so however, which is a constant source of conflict between her and Takae.

Answer: Kakuro

You first meet Rentaro Aihara near the baths of the ryokan. He explains that he has his own shed in the garden, where he usually can be found, although he actually lives next door to the ryokan. He has lived there since age seven with his father. He has always spend a lot of time at the ryokan and is now officially the handyman there and also Miwako's boyfriend. His biggest dream is to move to the city, where the big technology firms are. Miwako is very devoted to the ryokan and refuses to move to the city. Rentaro says himself that he prefers working with machines, as they are totally oblivious to awkwardness.

Rentaro gives Nancy three different types of puzzles to solve, as he is totally into numbers. He starts with the nonogram puzzles. In a nonogram puzzle you see a large grid with numbers to both sides. You have to form a picture, with the numbers indicating the amount of unbroken filled-in squares. Near the end of the game a giant Nonogram puzzle will have to be solved. The second type of puzzle is the Sudoku puzzle. This puzzle involves filling in a 9x9 grid with numbers. Each row and column contains the numbers between 1 and 9 only once. During the game you will also have to fill in a giant Sudoku, in order to obtain the various commands for the robotic cat. The last type of puzzle is the Renogram puzzle. This puzzle involves creating an unbroken chain of numbers between 1 and 88 in a grid. In the game there is no giant Renogram however. The game also does not involve the Kakuro puzzle, which is basically a crossword, but with numbers instead of letters.

Answer: Savannah Woodham

When Nancy helps Rentaro fix a broken portrait, she finds a Certificate of Spirit Removal and a newspaper article. The certificate is signed by Savannah Woodham. After meeting Yumi Shimizu, Nancy becomes good friends almost instantly. When Yumi sends her over to her apartment to retrieve some bento boxes, Nancy takes the opportunity to snoop around and finds a ghost book written by Savannah and her business card inside. The ghost book does contain a chapter about the Ryokan Hiei, but it was torn out. Nancy manages to contact Savannah and she tells about the spooky things going on at the ryokan. Eventually she was asked to leave by the family. She has left ghost hunting since then and is now a tech reporter, covering the expo in Kyoto. She has an assistant called Logan, that is very protective of her. Nancy however asks her friend Bess Marvin to flirt Logan, so she can talk to Savannah. Savannah does give her more information on the room she stayed in at the ryokan. In the room there is a secret passageway that leads to a hidden bath area. The newspaper article that Nancy finds, turns out to be about the death of Kasumi. She drowned after slipping in the baths. She died alone, which makes her mother and daughters feel very guilty, as they were all at the ryokan that night, but did not realize what had happened. As a result hardly anyone wants to translate the article for her. Eventually Savannah's assistant Logan gives Nancy a translation.

Anja Mittelmeier is the castellan of the Castle Finster in Germany in "The Captive's Curse". Charleena Purcell is a romance novelist. She first appears in "The Secret of Shadow Ranch" as a phone contact, but returns in "Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon" as one of the guest invited on a ghost train. Deirde Shannon is from River Heights, Nancy's hometown, and is a rival of hers. She appears in "Alibi in Ashes".

Answer: Teaching English

Nancy has enrolled in a special teachers program. During the daytime she teaches English to Japanese children, aged 7. During the game she gets to grade the homework of her students. Since Nancy is teaching during the day, she has to solve the mystery of the game during the evening hours, when she is free to explore the city. You can change the time of the game to advance to the next day or some hours ahead. You can't however change it to any time before 7 PM, since Nancy will still be teaching before that time.

There are five different topics for the homework assignments, ranging from the family to farm animals. You can stamp each sentence with a red or green checkmark, depending on whether it is grammatically correct. You can give the students a mark for their overall performance as well.

Answer: A comic book

Pachinko is a sort of pinball machine from Japan. The player shoots balls into the machine, where a grid of pins is found. Depending on where the balls go, you get additional balls and win points, that can be exchanged for prizes. The prize that Nancy especially wants to win is a comic book, detailing the adventures of Koji and Kit. On their journey they meet up with a yurei, a vengeful spirit. She also learns about EVP, Electronic Voice Phenomena. This is a way to record ghostly sounds. When Nancy finds the full copy of Savannah's book and reads the chapter about the ryokan, she finds out which locations are useful to record at. When she borrows a recorder from Rentaro and records at the locations specified, she hears very interesting things, including a fight between Yumi and Miwako.

When Nancy goes to the Matsue train station, she finds instructions to open a Japanese puzzle box. Miwako has one of these boxes on her desk. In this box Nancy finds an envelope with the password to Miwako's computer. The box is protected by the robotic cat Suki though, so Nancy needs to find a way to override the guard mode. She finds a DVD in Yumi's apartment. There is a spooky sequence on there, when Nancy plays it. In Yumi's apartment she finds two stone frogs as well, one of them locked with a code. Nancy needs to find the code to open it.

In the pachinko parlor there is also a purikura booth. In these booths you can make your own pictures and also print them. During the game Yumi will send Nancy several pictures made at the purikura booth. They have special designs on them. When put together, they reveal the code to one of the frogs in Yumi's apartment.

Answer: A star keycard

When Nancy talks to Savannah, she learns that there is a secret passageway in that room, leading to a hidden bath area. The door to this passageway is triggered by pressing on a wooden bird on the wall. Savannah however does not remember which room it was exactly, but does recall that it was a room that was not used very often. Nancy manages to break into Miwako's computer at night, when there is nobody at the reception desk. She deduces that the room is most likely room 33.

When doing her EVP recordings, she hears a fight between Miwako and Yumi. During the fight, Yumi throws something into the pond in the garden. When Nancy goes to search, she finds it is the key to the cultural room. In that room she finds a missing card for the hotel's security system. When she solves the security puzzle, she gets a key opening all rooms ending with the number 8 or 9. In Rentaro's shed she finds a star keycard. Each room has a panel in the wall with a star sign on it. When you place the star keycard on the star, you can open the panel and go from room to room. Using the key she can enter room 39 and then go all the way to room 33 opening the panels with the keycard. When she first reaches room 33, a booby trap has been set in the room. Nancy has to duplicate a pattern on the screen to escape via the balcony.

Answer: Fox

In the basement Nancy finds a hidden bath area. On the wall is a very big nonogram puzzle, put there by Kasumi. She wanted to make sure her daughters Miwako and Yumi worked together, if she wasn't there anymore. She gave each one of them half of the instructions for the nonogram puzzle. One half is in the bamboo in the garden, the other half in one of the stone frogs in Yumi's apartment. Nancy has to find both parts, in order to solve the puzzle. When she does complete it, the picture of a fox appears and a secret cabinet opens. In the cabinet there is a letter from Kasumi, detailing her true wishes for Miwako and Yumi. She wants them to follow their dreams.

In the cabinet there is also a sword. As soon as Nancy turns around, she comes face to face with the ghost, who pushes her in a murky pool of water, trapping her in a net. Nancy needs to use the sword to cut through the net, before she drowns. After she manages to free herself, she finds out that the ghost is only a doll. When she examines the doll, she learns an important clue about the identity of the person behind the hauntings.

Answer: Rentaro

When Nancy examines the ghost doll in the basement, she finds out that part of it looks like something that Rentaro was working on in his shed. He said it was part of a robotic dog. Nancy goes to the shed in the garden, but Rentaro is not there. She does find a work order, telling him to fix something in room 33. She also finds an automatic door opener and a new recorder he has worked on, that can send recorded messages to every mobile phone in the immediate area by pressing just one button.

Nancy goes to room 33 and finds Rentaro here preparing another haunting in that room. He confesses to being behind the hauntings. He wanted to persuade Miwako to leave the ryokan, so they can move to the city. Nancy manages to prevent him from escaping and records his confession. At the end you can choose whether to tell Miwako about what happened yourself or let Rentaro do it. There is a slightly different ending, based on what you choose. In the end Rentaro will either leave never to come back or stay on to undo some of the damage. Either way he loses the love of Miwako.

Now that the true wishes of Kasumi are known, Takae does no longer push Yumi to take over the ryokan and it is passed on to Miwako. Yumi begins expanding her bento business to the ryokan and manages to persuade Miwako to take some time off work every now and then. Takae's continues to give classes in the traditional Japanese arts. The ryokan is now booked solid again, obviously making it harder for Nancy to book a room next time she wants to visit!