Jasper Fforde Trivia

1. Which town does the action open in?

From Quiz Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey

Answer: Vermillion

The book starts with young Eddie Russett and his Swatchman father on their way to a new home in East Carmine. Vermillion is the regional hub of Red Sector West, and home to the Oz memorial, the Badly-Drawn map and the Last Rabbit. The Jasper Fforde website has identified it as real world Hereford, in England's Western Midlands.

From Quiz One of Our Thursdays is Missing

Answer: Resting between readings

Written Thursday was "resting between readings", which is a cause of some embarrassment for her. All the characters in BookWorld set great store by the number of readings their book gets, and Thursday worries that she is well on the way to the remainder bins. She even resorts to lying about her numbers of readers to cover up how few they are.

From Quiz The Works of Jasper Fforde

Answer: Jack Spratt and Mary Mary

Jack isn't your typical detective. Not only does he have a happy family but he is also a character from fiction with it being revealed that he is in fact Jack Sprat ("he ate no fat"). Jack also has similarities to the Jack from "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Jack the Giant Killer". Jack's wife Madeline has trouble coming to terms with Jack being a PDR (Person of Dubious Reality). However as Madeline is actually Madeline Usher from Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" it is assumed she would've taken this better if she'd known the truth about herself. It is assumed that Mary Mary is a nursery character herself, being featured in the rhyme "Mary Mary Quite Contrary" however this is not revealed in the first two books.

From Quiz First Among Sequels

Answer: A dodo cosy

She knits a blue and white dodo cosy for Pickwick the dodo, whose feathers have all fallen out.

From Quiz Character Exchange Program: Characters Wanted

Answer: Lost in a Good Book

Thursday realized that book characters could jump into "our" world in the first "Thursday Next" book, but it wasn't until the second, "Lost in a Good Book", that she got herself into the Great Jurisfiction Library, containing all books ever written or going to be written (and a few others besides). There she hears about book characters swapping roles for vacation-time. The Cheshire Cat himself shows her the ropes, although he is now the "Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat", due to a shift in county boundaries.

From Quiz Lost in a Good Book

Answer: Captain Marat

"The Adrian Lush Show" was the number one rated (Wednesday's show) and number two rated show (Monday's show) in England, during September 1985.

From Quiz Nursery Crimes Division

Answer: He gave fire to mankind

Prometheus did offer Zeus a false sacrifice, but this was not the reason he was chained for all eternity to a rock in the Caucasus, destined to have his liver picked out by birds each day and grow back each night. When Prometheus escaped, he sought asylum in England and ended up in the same lodgings as Humpty, but was never a suspect in the murder investigation. Later, he falls in love with Jack's daughter who happens to be called Pandora, and together they plan to return all the evils of the world to Pandora's box. Good luck to them!

From Quiz The Eyre Affair

Answer: 0

Thursday first met Acheron when she was in college; this is why she was picked to join SO-5 on the original case. Although Acheron 'hit on' Thursday, that was no reason for her to shoot him.

From Quiz "Something Rotten" by Jasper Fforde

Answer: in the state of Denmark

"Hamlet", of course. Though, if you've read the book, you'll realise that the question of authorship is not straightforward. Which of the cloned Shgakespeafes penned these words??? Denmark is the source of much of the conflict in the book, resolved by the Queen of Denmark's performance at George Formby's state funeral.

From Quiz Jasper Fforde--"Lost in a Good Book"

Answer: The Well of Lost Plots

"The Eyre Affair" was the first book in the series. In it, Thursday Next must chase Acheron Hades, who has found a way into novels and who kidnaps Jane Eyre.

From Quiz Jasper Fforde- 'The Eyre Affair'

Answer: Anton

Thursday Next is a prominent if not troublesome member of SO-27. Wednesday is the name of Next's mother, despite her being born on a Sunday. Mycroft is Thursday's uncle. Landen is eventually Next's husband.

From Quiz Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey

Answer: He wasn't an Ultraviolet

The whole book is about colour and perception. People can only see a limited section of the spectrum - the more they see, the higher their social standing - and swatchmen like Mr. Russet cure illness by flashing coloured light into the afflicted person's eyes. The man collapsed in National Colour was 'wrongspotting' - pretending to a rank he did not hold. He was in fact, one of the despised 'greys' unable to see colour at all.

From Quiz One of Our Thursdays is Missing

Answer: The Lady of Shalot

The Lady of Shalot has a magic mirror that lets her look out of BookWorld into the real world; written Thursday sneaks into the castle and uses it to spy on Landen and the children.

From Quiz The Works of Jasper Fforde

Answer: Female

Although it is assumed that Pickwick is a boy (so named for the Dickens work "The Pickwick Papers") when Pickwick lays an egg it is revealed that Thursday's assumptions were incorrect. Pickwick has a rebellious boy whom they name Alan.

From Quiz First Among Sequels

Answer: Carpet fitters

'ACME Carpets' provides cover so that Thursday, Spike et al can carry on doing the same jobs they did before their division of SpecOps was disbanded due to budget cuts. They also lay all types of floor covering at very competitive rates!

From Quiz Character Exchange Program: Characters Wanted

Answer: Miss Havisham

"It is Miss Havisham, abandoned at the altar and living her life in dreary isolation dressed in her tattered wedding robes, that steals the show." - a quote by Millon de Floss (one of Fforde's many puns, this one referring to "Mill on the Floss", by George Eliot). Havisham, from "Great Expectations", is the literary character appointed to guide Thursday through the rigors of fictional existence. With her help, Thursday is able to delve into backstories, visit early drafts, deleted characters, or nonsensical discarded chapters.

From Quiz Lost in a Good Book

Answer: SommeWorld

Spike often mentions that he would love to start working at SommeWorld. We also learn about Cindy, and Spike starts to figure out how to come clean about his profession.

From Quiz The Eyre Affair

Answer: Bedroom

Thursday's father comes back, to tell Thursday to stop her mother from painting the bedroom. Accidentally, Thursday does quite the opposite, convincing her to paint it in the first place. Mauve was such an ugly color.

From Quiz "Something Rotten" by Jasper Fforde

Answer: Lady Emma Hamilton

Emma Hamilton and Hamlet are both staying with Thursday's mum. At least now she's not having to worry about Emma Hamilton and her husband...

From Quiz Jasper Fforde--"Lost in a Good Book"

Answer: Aornis

The Aornis is one of the rivers of Hades. Acheron's sister Aornis pursues Thursday in order to avenge her brother's death.

From Quiz Jasper Fforde- 'The Eyre Affair'

Answer: 32

SO-27 is Literary Detectives. Information about departments below SO-20 is classifed.

From Quiz Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey

Answer: To conduct a chair census

You wouldn't want to harvest Yateveos - they are carnivorous and have lightning reactions! Equally, it would be sort of mean to hunt the relatively harmless Bouncing Goats. The synthetic colour supply, delivering the only colour that all members of Eddie's society can see, is strictly the province of the National Colour elite, and not for the likes of an eighteen year old oik like Eddie!

From Quiz One of Our Thursdays is Missing

Answer: Set fire to a bus load of nuns and orphan puppies

The butler, Sprockett, shows written Thursday an old newspaper clipping, telling how a bus load of nuns, travelling with the orphan puppies, was deliberately set on fire, with the loss of all on board. The picture of the perpetrator is definitely Whitby, and Thursday agrees that she couldn't possibly date him knowing what he had done.

From Quiz The Works of Jasper Fforde

Answer: Landen

Landen was eradicated by the Goliath Corporation because Thursday trapped their employee Jack Shitt in "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. Lola and Randolph were the generics living in the house boat. Gran was Thursday's "Grandmother" (it is later revealed to be a future version of herself) who is there to make sure Thursday doesn't succumb to the mind worm implanted in her brain by Aornis Hades. According to Fforde, "The Big Over Easy" is the result of the book 'Caversham Heights' featured in "The Well of Lost Plots."

From Quiz First Among Sequels

Answer: Half a second of snooker ball

Friday knows all along that the 'mystery object' is a half second of snooker ball but only admits it on the way home. He MUST join the ChronoGuard to save the World but is refusing on the grounds of being a bone idle teenager with no desire to get blown up/squished/otherwise horribly dead.

From Quiz Character Exchange Program: Characters Wanted

Answer: To Kill a Mockingbird

The Cat credits "To Kill a Mockingbird" with the #1 rank, largely because "it was the only one that really translated well into Arthropod" (a Ffordian race with dominating consumer demographics). Harry Potter was hitting full stride with "Goblet of Fire" at the time of Fforde's publication, 2002, but the series is set in the 1980's, so in Thursday's world, Mr. Potter has only just been born. FYI: The Cat's ranking for "Jane Eyre" was as follows: 728th favorite fictional book, 82,581,430 total readings to date, 829,321 people reading it currently, and 1,421 people reading it "as we speak".

From Quiz Lost in a Good Book

Answer: Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene"

In an anachronistic scene, in "Something Rotten" we learn that Faerie Queene is the book that Granny Next has not read, and thus is the book that lets her 'shuffle her mortal coil'.

From Quiz Nursery Crimes Division

Answer: All 356,000 of Reading's sparrows

'NCD officers are eager to interview an unidentified sparrow.' However, the fly gave them a good description and DS Spratt was confident that interviewing all the sparrows would lead to a conviction. Some hope.

From Quiz The Eyre Affair

Answer: Congresswoman Kelly

In the opening of Chapter 8, Fforde adds one of his signature excerpts. This particular one is from Congresswoman Kelly's speech against funding for new forms of propulsion in August of 1972.

From Quiz "Something Rotten" by Jasper Fforde

Answer: Friday Parke-Laine and Alan

Friday's father is Landen Parke-Laine, who was eradicated in "Lost in a Good Book", leaving behind no trace of his existence other than Friday. Landen's parents were Houson and Bildon, but Thursday resisted the temptation to call her son Hotelon. Neither Thursday nor Pickwick seem able to control the delinquent dodo, Alan.

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