I remember that one! I could never get anywhere with it (or, to be fair, any of the other interactive fiction games of that era -- I had hoped that having some knowledge of the original story might have helped in this case, but it really didn't...)

We were playing the original ZX Spectrum version that didn't, so far as I remember, have the pretty pictures, and as I couldn't get more than a few 'rooms' in any direction it was not a very rewarding activity -- play time was less than the tape loading time :-p Still, the game was second-hand and only cost a few pence, so I just wrote it off to experience.