ASOUE: "The Grim Grotto," by Lemony Snicket Quiz

Answer: Klaus originally thought the scraps of paper swirling around the children were articles from the Daily Punctilio, but as the Baudelaires gathered them, he learned he was wrong.

It is true that, after Sunny responded to Klaus' description of the water cycle with the word "tedium," Klaus agreed it was dull, but it was leading them away from Count Olaf. It is true that on this ride described as passive, Violet fidgeted over Quigley Quagmire's ability to escape the stream, and Sunny worried about how the fish would taste if they were to leave in the ash-filled waters.

It is true that the children could see that a great fire had razed the hinterlands, and realized the fire that Count Olaf's troupe had started to destroy Madame Lulu's carnival was responsible. But, while it is true that Klaus thought the paper scraps blowing past them as a result of the fire were articles from the Daily Punctilio, the children had no interest in such articles, and did not gather any of the scraps.

It was Lemony Snicket who learned later on that the papers were from another publication altogether, and would have been of great help had the Baudelaires tried to collect them.

Answer: The Queequeg was in good shape, except for the malfunctioning Volunteer Factual Dispatch machine.

Violet remebered the phrase posted about the VFD library and successfully used that as the password Captain Widdershins asked for. Captain Widdershins greeted them in a very confusing speech; for example, he said "One of you is a baby! Aye! No-- both of you are babies! No-- there's three of you! No-- none of you are babies! Well, one of you sort of is a baby! Welcome! Aye!" He thought the Baudelaires would know him, as he had patrolled Lake Lachrymose for years, and expected Aunt Josephine would have explained who he was.

As he showed them around the Queequeg, the captain pointed out that the Queequeg had been attacked by villains, leeches, sharks, realtors, pirates, girlfriends, torpedoes, and angry salmon, and therefore was not in the best of shape.

Answer: The uniforms worn by the crew were shiny, waterproof, with a picture of the captain on the front, along with waterproof boots and a diving helmet.

It is true that the cook was Phil, whom they had met earlier at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. In addition to the captain and Phil, the other crew member was Fiona, the captain's step daughter, who was interested in fungi (and therefore was a mycologist). Prior to Phil the crew included Fiona's mother, Jacques Snicket, Jacques' brother, and a woman who turned out to be a spy.

The crew wore similar looking uniforms, waterproof with boots and a diving helmet, ironically (as the sub is named the Queequeg) with a portrait of the author Herman Melville on the front.

Answer: Esme Squalor's latest "stylish" outfit made her look like the red herring that she had "sold" at the In Auction.

The Baudelaires did observe that rowing was done by children, some of whom were Snow Scouts, some of whom appeared to be from Prufrock Preparatory School, and some they did not recognize at all. The children were threatened with Fernald's tagliatelle grande if they did not pay attention during the recital. Olaf did indicate that the sub had all these features.

But Esme was dressed as a rather limp-armed octopus, not as a red herring.

Answer: Poems by Herman Melville and Edgar Guest were used in the creation of the coded message.

It is true that Quigley Quagmire sent a message to the Queequeg, and a copy of the message to someone whose initials were J.S., indicating that three additional volunteers on board should go to Briny Beach. However, while Quigley did use Verse Fluctuation Declaration to code the message, the poems used were written by Lewis Carroll and T.S. Eliot.

Answer: lousy

Mr. Snicket gave three definitions for the word "lousy": (1) bad, (2) infested with lice, and (3) abundantly supplied, the most obscure of the three definitons. Mycelium was defined as one of three parts of the mushroom, thread-like extensions of the mushroom under the surface. Wasabi was a Japanese seasoning that can act as a horseradish substitute. And the term bugaboo was defined as a kind of monster.

Answer: In the search of the Gorgonian Grotto, Fiona found a letter written from one of the Snicket siblings to Count Olaf.

The picture Klaus found of the Widdershins showed that Fiona had triangular glasses as a baby, and she still wore glasses of the same style. She did admit to finding Phil's optimism to be tiresome, and she showed she cared for the middle Baudelaire child by kissing him before letting the three escape.

However, the letter she found in the grotto, while written by Kit Snicket, was a warning to Gregor Anwhistle, not Count Olaf.

Answer: The captain explained the Snicket Snickersnee was a festival founded by the Snickets to provide some humor during the stressful time after the schism.

The captain did offer to allow Klaus to marry Fiona (and Violet to marry her brother, who turned out to be Olaf's hook-handed henchman) if they found the sugar bowl. He did make the sonar comparison to a cave described by a certain philosopher, and he did tell how Fiona's mother died.

However, the Snicket Snickersnee wasn't related to humor, laughs, and snickers; instead, it referred to the Snicket's attempt to wrest control of the fire-searching salmon from the Cafe Salmonella.

Answer: One of Fernald's favorite people on board Olaf's submarine was Carmelita Spats.

One of the main reasons the hook handed man wanted to leave on the Queequeg was his dislike of Carmelita Spats -- and who could blame him! The other statements are true -- he had read poetry with his stepfather, he did rue the Anwhistle Aquatics fire, and he believed people weren't just wicked or noble; rather, they were like chef's salad "with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."

Answer: It Couldn't Be Done

"My Last Duchess," by Robert Browning, was the poem Klaus found which taught him about Verse Fluctuation Declaration. "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll, and a poem in "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot were used by Quigley Quagmire to send a message to the Baudelaires. But "It Couldn't Be Done," by Edgar Guest, was not a poem mentioned in "The Grim Grotto."

Answer: A reporter at the Daily Punctilio, Geraldine Julienne, had been assigned as the Baudelaire's new guardian.

Talk about deja vu! It was just like the first morning in the first book, a gray, foggy day, with Violet skipping rocks into the water at Briny Beach, when Mr. Poe showed up to take the Baudelaires away and begin their long journey. However, the cycle was broken when the Baudelaires did NOT leave with Mr. Poe, but instead got into a cab being driven by Kit Snicket, the sister of Jacques and Lemony. Mr. Poe did not have a guardian in mind; he was going to take the Baudelaires to the police station.

He was at Briny Beach due to a message signed by J.S., whom he said he assumed was Geraldine Julienne (for some unknown reason).

Answer: The cook limped due to a stamping machine accident.

Cptain Widdershins had taught Madame Lulu about the use of coded stains; Gregor Anwhistle had been an ichnologist (one who studies plant and animal trace fossils); and Phil, optimistic as always, expressed the thought about gorgons. However, he wasn't limping due to the stamping machine accident that had occured at Sir's lumbermill in Paltryville; rather he had been lucky enough to have gotten close enough to a deadly shark that the shark bit him.

Answer: Viscous Fungal Distribution

Voluntary Fish Domestication is a project that Captain Widdershins was working on to train salmon to swim upstream and search for forest fires. Violet's Fifteenth Date was the VFD reference to balloons for Violet's 15th birthday celebration Sunny had prepared. Verifying Fernald's Defection was the headline Jacques Snicket wrote in the Daily Punctilio to assign blame for the Anwhistle Aquatics fire. Volatile Fungus Deportation was the VFD phrase used to refer to Gregor Anwhistle's experiments with the mushrooms.

Answer: Snicket told a story about how a taxi driver had given him charts documentating the tides.

All of the following were revelations about Lemony Snicket except the story of the taxt driver. Captain Widdershins told how the taxi driver had given him the tidal charts.

Answer: "Nadasuchre" was the reference Sunny gave when she noticed the waning of the mushrooms in the grotto.

Sunny used the words procto, shivalrush, and subjavik as defined. When she noticed the mushrooms had receded, she used the term "wane." She used the term "nadaschre" to indicate she had not yet found the sugar bowl in her search.