What you are given is a phrase of nonsense words and a number. On the screen you see lots of portions of nonsense words. You have to find the correct set of portions of nonsense words so that you have the specified number of portions AND if the portions are rearranged they can make the phrase you were given.
What I usually did was take a screen shot pause/minimize the game, then take all the time I wanted in MS Paint finding the right portions of words. Usually I'd spot two or three, go back to the game, grab those, take another screen shot, then repeat. The portions of words have a tendency to move so finding all of them at once really wasn't a good idea (for me anyway).
Sometimes there's more than one way to make the phrase, but there would only be one way to do so with the right number of portions of words.
edit: Windrose, he's talking about The Magicians Handbook: Cursed Valley.
Edited on 07/30/2009 at 4:25:15 PM PST