The Cellar

And Bates is where? The servant starts off his day in the kitchen but, once you've looked closely at the fountain, descends into the cellar to sharpen a knife -- leaving the door ajar behind him. Follow him down, move right, past the central well, and ask Bates about draining the fountain.

He tells you the pump controls are in the cellar. In fact, you can see them from here; it's the shadowy bit of machinery behind the right side of the well.

That just allows you to take a peek at the control panel in the rear of cellar. Do so now and you’ll get a quick look at the three wheels and four gauges on this spooky array before Samuel says "I have no idea which one does what." (You try to look at the panel without talking to Bates, but, being that Samuel knows nothing, you’re shown nothing.)

Fair enough. Ask Bates again about "draining the fountain" and he'll now lay out the basics of this stand-alone puzzle and reveal that the second gauge from the right displays the water level in the fountain.

Odds & ends: Bates's other topics aren’t required reading, but they do elicit some interesting bits and pieces.

“Henry” reveals that Dr. Hermann said Henry died after midnight. This gives Samuel a context to respond to an assertion by Morris (in the “footprint” thread mentioned earlier) that he was home the previous night -- though he’ll respond the same way even if Samuel hasn’t talked to Bates on this topic.

“Robert” indicates your uncle, not one to let a little thing like a death interrupt his daily routine, was reading the newspaper in the dining room that morning. (This is not something you can witness. Nothing ever happens in the dining room.) Robert responded in similarly indifferent fashion in Chapter I when Samuel asked him about William’s death.

“Detective” reveals that Bates was alerted to the discovery of Henry's body at 6 a.m. by a babbling Morris and gets you two new topics. The “Morris” one establishes that Morris helped with the gardening (i.e. that there’s nothing suspicious per se about Morris’s presence in the rear garden at that hour) and the “Hermann” one that Henry’s body is being stored in the old morgue.

That's in the cellar of Dr. Hermann's house. You can't visit it until Victoria places it on your map a little later in the chapter.

The Pump Puzzle

Unhappily, the wheel that accompanies the fountain gauge is missing -- missing as in "not in the game" -- so you can’t directly control the water level in the fountain. Instead, you’ll use the other three wheels to cobble together the desired effect: bring that gauge down to zero.

Naturally, there's a hitch or three.

1) The big hitch: The index beside the gauge doesn’t give you an intuitive read on the level of water in the fountain. At a glance, it looks appears to be set to a depth of 10 points, but it’s actually at 13. The markers beside the gauge are six ticks apart, rather than the conventional five, and the bottom line on the gauge doesn’t mean empty, but one tick above empty. Who designed this thing?

2) As you adjust the flow, none of the gauges may go above 16 points.

3) Reducing the fountain gauge to zero means exactly to zero.

Hence, before you start, you’ll want to know exactly what each wheel does.

Left wheel: A right-click lowers the level one point in the leftmost column and two points in the second column from the right. A left-click raises those same columns by the same amounts.

Center wheel: A right-click lowers the level three points in the leftmost column, one point in the second column from the left and four points in the second from the right and raises it two points in the rightmost column. Again, a left-click does the reverse.

Right wheel: A right-click lowers the level two points in the leftmost column, raises it three points in the second column from the right and lowers it one point in the rightmost column. And yet again, the reverse for a left-click.

Knowing all this, it's easy to work out a drop of 13 points in the fountain column: two right-clicks on the middle wheel (eight points), a left-click on the right wheel (three points) and a right-click on the left wheel (two points). (Alternate solutions: Three left-clicks on the right wheel and either one right-click on the middle one or two right-clicks on the left one.) The order doesn't matter.

You'll hear some gushing and gurgling and Samuel says "Ready!" in a hoarse voice.

Odds & ends: You'll note that both the pumping station and the control panel have "R.I.S." signs across the top. It’s not explained. The name of the contractor?

Also, note that while you can raise the water level in the fountain (according to the gauge), this won’t be reflected in the pool’s actual appearance. (It has only the two states: the level at the start and empty.)

While I’m Down Here Dept.: In Chapter I, Victoria mentioned a secret chapel beneath the castle. Now that you’re in the cellar, you may feel inclined to search for an entrance.

One spot bears modest fruit. Click on the central well. Samuel says it’s supposed to connect the castle with underground corridors but that this is merely “old hearsay.”

This is a small serving of red herring -- the well itself won’t ever connect to anything -- but there is indeed a sub-cellar. See the floor grate near the grinder? That’ll eventually let you into the castle sewers, but not until the end of Chapter IV.

Other hotspots: In the sideways-scrolling front section: the big wine kegs to the right of the entrance and the water tanks behind the kegs on the right side of the cellar. In the rear: the pump mechanism, the keg to the left of the pump control panel and the wine racks at the left rear.

The Grounds

Get back upstairs and out to the rear garden. The water has indeed drained. Take a close-up look at the exposed symbol on the right wall -- similar to the one on the castle tower -- and you'll see the golden key just to the right. Take the key and snap a picture of the symbol. (You already have film in the camera, so there's no running around this time.) Now get back to the greenhouse and use the new key on the metal box in the right-hand drawer to reveal ...

Damn. No pawn ticket.

However, the letter on the left is an anonymous note to Victoria stating that the groom Morris is a thief and ex-con who's been using the "old back door" (which is nowhere in evidence) to steal wine from the castle cellar.

Samuel interprets this note as part of a blackmail attempt. He’s right -- this must be what Morris was looking for in the greenhouse -- but this assertion may seem like a bolt from the blue unless you asked Henry about the locked greenhouse in Chapter I and learned of Morris’s “snooping.”

Odds & ends: The note’s not exactly damning evidence. Suppose Morris had taken it. Henry could simply have written another. A better item for the locked box would have been actual evidence of Morris’s thefts -- say, a picture of the groom entering or emerging from the “old back door.”

In any case, this explains the wine bottle on the stable work table and also Morris's visceral reaction to your Chapter I question about the old wing. (He accused Henry of spreading gossip about him.) Henry was watching Morris, and Morris apparently was watching Henry watching Morris.

A natural question: Did Morris kill his blackmailer?

Morris is now hammering away at something at the stable work table. When confronted with the letter, he confesses to the wine thefts: He's taken "a few" bottles from the cellar. Morris then asks for the letter and, despite his suspicions, Samuel turns it over to him. This is all you’re required to do here to move on with the story.

However, if you ask about Henry, you’ll get a slightly more detailed version of the body’s discovery than you’ve already picked up from Bates and Collier. This gets you a “Morris” topic ... and here things may get a little confusing: Samuel asks if the groom was in the stable the previous day and notes that the lights weren’t on.

This is a mistake: Samuel must have meant “last night” (that is, when the murder was committed) rather than “yesterday.” And how would the allegedly resting Samuel have known if the stable lights were on or not unless he was out and about himself the previous night? This throws some more suspicion Samuel’s way -- perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not.

In any case, Morris reads this as an implication that he helped Henry into the fountain and vigorously denies involvement in the gardener’s death -- at the end protesting that any suspicion cast his way could cost him his job and “who would want to hire a man with one leg that is almost completely lame?”

You already have the “footprint” topic if you looked at the footprint beside the fountain, but this line from Morris gives it better context. Samuel, playing Junior G-Man, argues here that the deep print beside the fountain was made by a limping man or someone carrying a heavy load. (As mentioned, it will develop that Henry didn't drown in the fountain but was probably killed elsewhere and then dumped there.)

Morris offers that he might well have made the print while working in the garden, that he was home all night and, when Samuel asks how he knows Henry died at night, says this nugget came from an overheard conversation between Collier and Dr. Hermann. (This is supported by what you learned earlier from Bates.)

Samuel then wavers a bit in his suspicion -- he’ll go after Morris again in less rational fashion in Chapter V -- and says he'll take up the footprint issue with Dr. Hermann.

Other hotspots: Outdoors: the wagon (adjusted for the rain).

Stay or Go?

Turning over Henry’s letter to Morris allows you to use the game map again. Should you use it now or wait?

Either way’s OK. You can perform some useful tasks in the village right now -- establishing at the pawn shop (now open) that Murray won't sell you Henry's strange object without the receipt and that his photo-developing gear is busted. At the Three Kegs, proprietor Harry paints Henry as a drinker ... but Mark indicates he saw Henry sober the previous day.

But ultimately this will prove a dead-end and you’ll have to backtrack to Black Mirror to open a path to Dr. Hermann's house. This gives you a couple of concrete tasks to complete in Willow Creek.

How do we get Dr. Hermann’s place on the game map?

Make the rounds of the usual suspects (so to speak) at Black Mirror. Bates, still in the cellar, knew the source of the wine thefts -- which he puts at a dozen bottles -- but let it slide rather than upset his mistress in the wake of William's death. (Bates, I don’t think that knife’s gonna get any sharper!)

An impatient Robert complains about the detective's questions, says he's busy with his work and suggests he'll reveal something of that work to you the following day. (Red herring #1: Samuel is in Wales the next day and Robert’s off at Ashburry. He never does explain himself.) And, after Samuel is brought up short by his grandmother (see below), he'll caution you to remember Victoria’s advanced age and says he'll talk to her in the evening. (Red herring #2: Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. Either way, it has no impact. When Samuel returns to Black Mirror at chapter’s end, his only conversations will be non-interactive ones.)

If you just want to cut to the chase, talk to Victoria. She’s sitting on the sofa beside the hearth in the main hall and she’s in no mood. But before she sends you packing, she reveals that Dr. Hermann lives along the road between Black Mirror and Willow Creek. If you've completed the steps outlined above, this will write his home to your map. Head there at your earliest opportunity.

Odds & ends: While at Black Mirror, visit the old wing again to find a ceiling collapse has blocked access to the attic and William’s study. Samuel won't even approach the damaged area. Move him off the stone tiles of the entryway and onto the wooden boards and he'll say another section of ceiling could collapse at any second and retreat to safety.

The Warmhill church can be revisited -- though to no clear purpose at this stage in the chapter. The grave-digger is gone and the church is still locked. The persistent availability of the location may make you think something's going on here somewhere. Nope. Only one small thing has changed: The wind and rain have extinguished the candle on William's grave.

Hermann's House

You'll arrive to find the doctor dumping a bag into a big garbage bin beside the house. Check this out later. You can't do so now, as Hermann automatically invites you inside and then down to his basement morgue. He'll then replace his keys on their hook -- an indication the dumpster is locked -- and you'll go straight into conversation.

Ask about William and Hermann comes up short on his assurance that he would tell you “everything,” revealing little more than the previous day.

Samuel gets bent out of shape again. He thinks Hermann’s holding something back and says the doctor’s report on William's death would be of interest -- but that he can't read it with Hermann present.

Don’t bust a gut looking for it. As mentioned earlier, no such document exists and you’ll never learn what, if anything, Hermann concealed about William’s death. This appears to be an artifact from some earlier stage of the design.

Nevertheless, the things you'll do in the name of obtaining the phantom document are helpful in obtaining Henry’s pawn ticket.

Odds & ends: You may be haunted by this issue -- especially when you discover that, using the “’footprint” topic, you can squeeze Hermann for more information about Henry’s murder. Alas, no comparable hotspot exists in William’s case.

Ask after Henry to confirm the pawn receipt is among his belongings -- the doctor never actually says so, but Samuel assumes it correctly -- and that the dead man's belongings will be inaccessible to you until the police investigation is complete.

If you found the footprint beside the fountain and discussed it with Morris, you can take up this issue as well. Hermann discounts both the footprint and the notion of Morris as murder suspect. His autopsy on Henry has turned up something without precedent: Every drop of blood has been squeezed from his body -- "like the juice from an orange." Hermann declares this to be “flat out impossible.”

What to make of this? As with the burns on William’s body, you’ll never learn exactly how it happened. The most I can do is speculate. But, in combination with that disclosure and the intro, this fact seems designed to turn the player’s suspicions away from a conventional murderer and toward a supernatural one. And this foreshadows the introduction of the clearly supernatural -- in the form of the Black Mirror and the Gordon family curse -- later in the chapter.

Such a creature wouldn’t require real-world tools, of course, but the funnel atop the blood-stained branch grinder from Chapter I must come inevitably to mind.

The doctor charges you to keep this info to yourself. But you can spill the beans to Robert, and only Robert, in your next conversation by using the "positive" choice when Robert asks why you’re asking about exsanguination. Robert concurs with Hermann, but, as with William’s death, he doesn't seem all that interested in the discovery. (Again, Robert seems preoccupied. You’ll begin to get a sense of why at the end of this chapter.)

When you choose to end the chat with Hermann (or just run out of topics), you'll automatically let yourself out. (If you tried to bribe the doctor, it may feel as though you’ve been ejected.) You can rummage through the trash now. (See below.) And you can get back into he morgue again simply by using the intercom and then freely explore the near half of the cellar.

The key item on this visit: the jugs of developing fluid under the basins. The doctor is also a photographer. Could he ... ?

Yes, Hermann can develop the two pictures of the symbols from the murder scenes. Now that you've looked at the developer fluid, you can ask him to do so. Naturally, the doctor wants a favor: Pick up some toner (also called “fixer”) at the pawn shop. We'll do so during our forthcoming visit to Willow Creek.

OK, Hermann’s garbage. As predicted, the big dumpster is locked. Not so the smaller garbage pail beside it. Samuel makes off with a torn-up letter from the top. It's an easy matter to piece most of it together -- note that one little piece on the upper part of the right edge is always missing -- as the letters let you know which end is up.

Given that you found a corresponding letter outside Robert’s study and that the note is read in Robert’s own voice after the first few words, Samuel’s ruminations about the identity of the sender “R.” seem pretty silly. It's another mysterious note between the two doctors. Again, it contains no hard details, but refers cryptically to deliveries, results and research in the name of science.

This may seem a dead-end. Like the first note, it doesn’t pry loose any admissions from Hermann or Robert and you won’t begin to get a sense of Robert’s work until you enter the Ashburry asylum in Chapter IV. But this is the first of four tasks you must complete to enter the Warmhill church. (The other three are having your photos developed and recovering the two other parts of the “strange object.”)

Next up: the photos.

Other hotspots: In the vestibule: the fan (here called a “vent”), the skeleton at the right side of the screen, the picture above and to the right of the stairs down to the morgue, the stairs to the second floor, the butterfly collection above those stairs and the mirror to the left of the stairs. (Interestingly, this last one makes Samuel say he’s feeling “odd” and that he hopes his headaches won’t return.) In the morgue: the trolley at the left side of the screen, the pail below the left end of the autopsy table, the drums in the foreground, the basins around the corner from the entrance and the anatomical drawings above them. Outdoors: the lit third-floor window at the left end of the house. Samuel says this must be Hermann’s room. (An odd distinction. Isn’t this Hermann’s house?)

Willow Creek

So where do you go from here? Well, you do have a lead from Samuel's inner monologue: You want to browse around in the morgue. That requires distracting the doctor. You'll need help in that cause. And you'll find that help in Willow Creek. After your little chats with Hermann, you can now complete a couple of tasks in the village.

The obvious one: Get the toner. Just cross the river to the pawn shop. Yes, it's open! You'll find the lights on. The toner apparently looks exactly like the wine bottles from the castle's cellar. Compared to any earlier dealings with Murray, you’ll find this a very straightforward exchange.

(If you haven't yet discussed toner with Dr. Hermann, Murray will have a film topic instead. Use it and Murray explains that his photo-developing rig is busted.)

Just bring this “fixer” back to the doctor and either talk to him on the "give fixer" topic or drag the bottle onto him to deliver the toner. Leave the room and return, you’ll be able to talk to Hermann about your film. He’s busy with work and you’ll have to come back later.

This is the first of four occasions on which Samuel must wait for a third party. Mercifully, it’s the shortest wait of the four -- provided you’ve laid the groundwork by asking Hermann once about “developed photographs.” (This topic surfaces only if you leave the morgue and return or, alternatively, save your game immediately after delivering the toner, restore and then talk to Hermann.)

Then just use your map to retreat to the front of Hermann's house and return to the morgue. When you return, you'll notice a new item: a flat box on top of the left-hand basin against the upper wall. Your photos are done. Simply talk to Hermann about "developed photographs" and then collect them. Once in inventory, you'll find them in the back of William's diary.

You can’t do anything with the photos now and won’t until Chapter VI (when they’ll serve as a reference in a puzzle).

But you’re not out of leads. You’re not quite done with Murray. Unless you visited his shop earlier, he’ll have a second topic: the strange object put into his care by Henry. (If you did take up this topic earlier, you can skip ahead to the Three Kegs Inn now.)

The long and the short of it: Murray can't help you. No matter what attitude you take in this drawn-out exchange -- things take a decidedly nasty turn if you pick the "negative" option -- he won't sell you the companion piece to your strange object. This may surprise you, given his reputation as a cheat, but the proprietor insists that rules are rules.

You need to make the attempt anyway, as for some kooky reason this enables Harry at the Three Kegs to recommend Mark. (The seeming rationale: Mark has worked for Murray. However, Murray never actually mentions Mark.)

Get back over to the inn. This wet day finds Tom, the grave-digger from the Warmhill church and the messenger Mark all lifting a glass.

If you haven't yet visited Murray, the only topic on offer is the late Black Mirror gardener Henry. Harry paints Henry as a serious drinker. But Mark grudgingly reveals that he'd met Henry on the road to Willow Creek the previous evening and that he wasn't drunk, which would seem to put the kibosh on Collier and Hermann’s current theory about the gardener's death.

If you've already dealt with Murray, you can now ask Harry if Mark's reliable. Harry basically says "sort of."

This allows you to talk to Mark about Dr. Hermann and propose your distraction game. Play the nice guy in conversation (a "positive" choice) and it'll cost you 20 pounds -- 10 before and 10 after. Play the hard-ass ("negative") and it'll cost you 30, all up-front.

Not that it matters. In The Black Mirror, money exists only in the abstract, and Samuel can't run out. He’s flush. Right-click on his wallet once to remove a coin -- you’ll use these coins as tools in Chapter IV -- and a second time to learn “there’s quite a lot of money in it.”

Odds & ends: Vick’s back. He’s sitting on the barrels outside the Three Kegs Inn, and he’ll speak to you automatically after you either move past the center of the screen or click on the right exit.

The boy seems to be counting off the gaps between the lightning flashes and subsequent thunderclaps (He also periodically throws stones into the river.) He'll confess he can't go home, as he's in trouble over the window he broke yesterday. “Throwing my ball to the other side will be a lot safer,” he says.

But ... 1) Vick didn't break a window. His ball sailed through an open window and broke a glass over the Three Kegs’ bar! 2) Were Vick to throw his ball in the opposite direction, it’d go into the river. And given future events, “the other side” is an interesting choice of words.

The fisherman is still on-station on the dock. He plans to stay all day "unless it stops raining." Have a look at his boat beside the pawn shop to learn it is taking on water and that perhaps the fisherman would like to know. Hoof it back to him and he'll thank you, but add that he's not worried. The boat is older than he!

Other hotspots: Outdoors: the stairs down into the river near the entrance, the menu board beside the Three Kegs Inn’s front door and the wagon to the right of the tavern (all adjusted for the rain) and the clock on the clock tower. (The menu board is interactive in every chapter in which you can visit Willow Creek, but the menu never changes. Here, it’s smudged from the rain. Samuel says he can get the menu from Harry, but Harry’s mute on the subject.) In addition, the towels that were hanging outside the second-floor window have been removed. In Murray’s Pawn Shop: the coat stand to the left of the door, the two display tables and the boxes beneath the table farther from the window.

The shop also offers up a pair of non-interactive curiosities: The cover of the book you found in William’s desk appears in poster form in the shop’s upper left corner. And just to the right of that poster is a second one advertising R.D. & J.B. Fraser of Ipswich. That’s the closest the game ever comes to placing itself in the real world. Is this supposed to take place in that region? (Ipswich is a borough to the northeast of London.)

Then again, we’ll also run into the Fraser name on a similar sign during Samuel’s trip to Wales in Chapter III. Wales is located on England’s western central coast, so perhaps the Ipswich reference doesn’t mean that much!

Distraction

Once you end the chat with Mark in which your deal was struck, you'll automatically appear at Hermann's house. Events proceed apace. You make consummately awkward small talk with the doctor, the buzzer sounds, Hermann departs and you are left alone in the morgue -- for exactly as long as you need. (A clock’s not running here. Later diversions at the Ashburry asylum work the same way.)

You'll find the pawn ticket in the cardboard box on the shelves to the left of the desk at the back. And then there’s the matter of that locked garbage bin. You can't take Hermann's keys from the hook near the intercom -- he'd notice they were missing -- but you can take the imprint plastic from the top drawer of the desk at the back and use it on the keys to make an impression of the largest.

Odds & ends: You can also inspect Henry's corpse on the slab. There’s no real purpose other than to confirm its pale appearance. Just be sure you do so before your other business is complete or it’ll be headed-off by Hermann’s return.

Other hotspots: the human brain (in a pan on the desk) and the microscope to the right of the pan. (The latter comes into play in Chapter V, as does the currently non-interactive forceps to the right of the microscope.)

Once you have the receipt and have made the imprint, you’ll hear the doctor's footsteps on the stairs and will make a consummately awkward exit. Return to Willow Creek, cross the river to Murray's for a chat about your "bill of exchange" (uneventful save for Murray’s attempt to overcharge you) and take possession of your new square strange object. Drag it onto the first. They click together like a couple of Legos™.

But note that the jewel Henry mentioned is missing. As mentioned earlier, that's the third part. Don’t worry about it for now. It’ll turn up in due course when you open the trash bin beside Hermann’s house, and that’s our next step.

You have that imprint of the trash-bin key. Where can you have a key made?

Only the inn proprietor Harry has the key topic and he suggests Mark. Mark's returned from the jaunt to Hermann's house and he's fine with it. No extra charge. He suggests you return in an hour or so. When you wrap up your chat, you'll leave the pub automatically and head one screen toward the village’s left exit. Return to the inn and you'll find Mark's gone.

Another wait, but a fairly short one. Just keep returning to the pub, asking Harry about Mark each time and leaving again. The third time you speak to Harry, you'll learn Mark just popped in (invisibly, it seems) and left the key for you. Return to Hermann's house, use your new key on the garbage bin and open it up.

What kind of monster is Hermann? The bin contains a cornucopia of human debris. Samuel doesn’t offer an opinion, but it’s a fair bet this is the contents of the “parcels” Mark carries between Robert and Hermann and that this unorthodox method of disposal is the doctor’s end of their deal.

Most of this stuff is too disgusting to examine ... except for that one bit of burlap-like material on the near side of the bin. They're Henry's clothes. Right-click on them in your inventory to reveal there's something hard in the lining. Use the rook knife from William's study to cut it open and you'll find a gem (a diamond, rather than the ruby forecast by Henry in Chapter I). This fits perfectly into the indentation atop the second strange object -- the third and final piece of the key.

Other hotspots: In the garbage bin: the skeleton to the left (beneath Henry’s clothes) and the bloody bags to the right.

Warmhill Church

And that completes the quartet of items required for entry into the Warmhill church. You’ll now find the side entrance open. Try the locked gate just up-screen from the entrance -- this gets you a “belfry” topic when you talk to Father Frederick -- and then head left from the gate to find the priest with a parishioner. Just interrupt him and run through all the father’s topics to get to the "belfry" one. Use it and he agrees to let you into the room beyond the locked gate.

Odds & ends: Actually, this isn't the belfry at all. That's where the church bell is hung. Rather, it appears to be a section of the transcept located below the belfry.

Look at the aperture in the abutment to the left of the large door at the rear. It's in the shape of your combined strange objects. Drag your assembled objects into the opening. An altar rises from the floor behind you. Click on it to kick off an elaborate stand-alone puzzle.

Other hotspots: In the main body of the church: the tablet on the wall to the right of the side entrance, the main gate (using the door icon that appears if you try to leave via the near end of the nave), the confessional, the parishioner, the altar and the open book (on a stand to the right of the altar). In the “belfry”: the large gate, the window to the left of the gate, the picture to the right of the gate, the pictures in the lower left corner, the rope just to the left of the two pillars in the foreground (this is interactive only below the buckle in the left-hand pillar) and, hard to spot, the shallow flight of stairs between the pillars.

The Stones Puzzle

This is the intricate lock William mentioned in the diary you recovered from his study. As outlined in the diary, you need to reverse the positions of the six white and six black stones while keeping the red one at the center of the cross. (This can be moved, but must end up where it started.)

Like many of the game’s puzzles, it's not difficult so much as busy. The key is keeping open spaces adjacent to the central one so you easily put blocking stones on sidings while moving other stones to their targets. To maximize the available space, keep the four side pockets on the upper and lower parts of the cross filled until the end.

We've found several solutions. Here's the quickest of them. Don’t be intimidated by this 19-step program. The puzzle will feel done long before it’s actually done.

1. Push two white stones in the lower part and two in the upper part of the cross into the side pockets.

2. For the purposes of this example, push the red stone and one of the white stones from the lower part up into the upper part. Now we have some maneuvering room ...

3. ... and also an empty spot for a black stone in the lower part. Again, for the purposes of our example, we'll take it from the right part. In fact, since we have extra room in the lower part, move all three black stones from the right part into the lower part! One of them will stay. The other two will come and go before they find permanent homes. So that's one down and 12 to go.

4. This clears out the right part. Move two white stones and the red stone down from the upper part to refill it. One of these white stones will remain here, so that's two down.

5. And this, in turn, opens up a space for a black stone in the upper part. Seeing a pattern here? We'll use the topmost black stone from the lower part to fill it. Three down.

6. Now we're going to free the red stone trapped in the right part. Just move the leftmost white stone from the right part into the upper part and the red stone from the right part into the lower part. Then move the white stone you just moved into the upper part right back into the right part. It’ll stay and that’s four down.

7. Move a white stone from the upper part into the right part to complete the replacement of the black originals with their white counterparts (five down) ...

8. ... and then a black stone from the left part into the upper-part space thus vacated (six down).

9. Now we’re going to free the remaining white stones in the lower part. Move the red stone and one black stone from the lower part into the upper part.

10. Move either of the white stones in the lower part into the free space in the left part. This opens up another space for a black stone in the lower part.

11. Now move the lowest black stone in the upper part into the vacant space in the lower part. Seven down.

12. Move the red stone and the remaining white stone from the upper part back down into the lower part.

13. This creates something of a vacuum in the upper part. Move all three stones from the left part -- one white and two black -- into the upper part. (Don't worry about the white one being trapped and out of position. That’s a just a technicality and easily tidied up later.)

14. Move the remaining two white stones and the red stone from the lower part into the left part. The left of the two white stones will remain here, so eight down.

15. This opens up a space for a final black stone in the lower part. Move the lowest black stone in the upper part down to fill it. Nine down.

16. The rest is really just mopping up and shouldn't require instructions. But we’ve gone this far, so what the hell.

Next we're going to free the red stone trapped in the left part. Move the rightmost white stone in the left part into the lower part, the red stone into the upper part and, finally, the just-moved white stone back into the left part. Ten down.

17. And now we'll free the white stone trapped in the upper part. Just move the red stone and a black stone in the upper part down into the lower part and then the white stone from the upper part into the left part. 11 down.

18. Move the uppermost black stone in the lower part into the space just vacated in the upper part. 12 down.

19. Move the red stone up to the center -- 13 down -- and then simply move the black stones in the upper and lower parts out of their side pockets to duplicate the original positions of the white stones ... and cue the dramatic music.