At a point when it's particularly aggravating, the elevator will suddenly grind to a halt. Argh! Click on the area near the button to see what the problem is.

Feh, gears! Clearly, you need to get the gears back on their little sprockets to connect the top gear to the bottom one in order to get the silly elevator moving again. Read to the end of this hint for a picture showing how to do this.

Nancy says she has to fix the elevator before the brakes give out, which tells you the task is timed -- and in fact, you only have about two minutes before the earth comes flying up to meet you. However, I've never had the time run out on me. Save before you start, and click on the Menu button to freeze the scene if you need time to think.

You have three sizes of gear: large, medium, and small. Any gear will go on any sprocket, but if it doesn't mesh with the teeth of another gear it's not the right place.

The distance between the sprockets is a good indicator about what gears go where. If a sprocket is a long way away from any other sprocket, that's probably where a large gear goes.

I usually place the large gears first, then look for sprockets that are very close to those gears and put the small gears there. If they're in the right place, the gears will adjust slightly to make the teeth mesh.

The gears don't lock in place when they're right. You won't know it's right until all the gears are placed correctly and start turning.

Still having trouble? Here's how I made the gears go together, though it's possible that other solutions will also work: