"The Austere Academy: Part One" Quiz

Answer: True

"For Beatrice-- You will always be in my heart, in my mind, and in your grave."

As Lemony Snicket, our narrator, says, we're about a third of the way through our dreadful tale about the Baudelaire orphans. Mr. Poe, still working at Mulctuary Money Management, has placed the Baudelaires in the safe and careful hands of Prufrock Preparatory School-- and they're not even the first orphans he's sent there. Mr. Poe's assistant, Jacquelyn, discovers this fact and types the location out on her typewriter before leaving the room abruptly. But everything is perfectly fine, of course.

Answer: Cake-sniffers

Mr. Snicket insists that a preparatory school should be the ideal place to meet new friends and settle in, especially if your home has been destroyed by a fire in the past. But the Baudelaires don't have much time to do this-- a young girl in a pink dress introduces herself as Carmelita Spats, the prettiest girl in all of Prufrock, and says that she is there to give them a tour of the school.

She repeatedly calls them 'cake-sniffers'-- a term she does not define but which Violet takes as an insult-- before they head through the hallways. Violet and Klaus notice that everyone in the school is looking at them funnily; Carmelita insists it's because their parents died in a fire.

Answer: Memento Mori

The school motto, found on both the school's pennant and their sports field scoreboard, is 'Memento Mori', a phrase that Klaus clarifies to mean 'Remember, you will die.' This story, as we should continue to remember, does not have a happy ending.

Down in the sewers, Jacquelyn hands off 'The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations', insisting that the Baudelaires come across it to uncover the truth behind what's going on in their lives. It's certainly a shame that Count Olaf comes across this information and, in an attempt to get to the Baudelaires first, he hijacks a Prufrock School bus with his henchpeople and orchestrates somewhat of a homecoming.

Answer: Violin

The Baudelaires come across the Prufrock School Library, but shortly after catching sight of that sanctuary, Carmelita drops them off back at Vice-Principal Nero's office, doing so ten minutes after their scheduled appointment on purpose and tattling on them.

He brings them in and plays the violin for them, expecting an ovation after (as is tradition), before launching into his lazy spiel about upholding the blah, blah, blah and such of the school. He also shows off the Advanced Computer System that the school has purchased (and it cost a lot!), designed to identify Count Olaf, even if he's in disguise. Oh yeah, and instead of staying in the beautiful, luxurious dormitory on the school grounds, the Baudelaires will have to live in a tin shed for orphans out back since they have neither a parent nor guardian to sign the permission slip for the regular accommodations. How dismal.

Answer: Administrative assistant

Vice-Principal Nero informs the Baudelaires that they will need to be on time for their classes or risk having their hands tied behind their back during meals. Violet will be learning under Mr. Remora in room 1; Klaus will be taught under Mrs. Bass in room 2. Sunny will not be taught. Instead, since Prufrock Preparatory has always suffered in its staffing budget, Sunny will act as Vice-Principal Nero's personal administrative assistant.

Count Olaf and his cronies arrive in the school bus to find that the Advanced Computer System is already doing its complex task at the door, but they don't notice that they have a stowaway. Jacquelyn's messenger, hiding in the back seat of the vehicle, makes his bold escape and heads inside. Unfortunately, while speaking to the school librarian, Olivia Caliban, he accidentally drops the book he'd been expected to deliver.

Answer: Crabs

'Making a mountain out of a molehill', as an expression, means 'making a big deal out of a small deal'. In describing the Baudelaires' shack, Vice-Principal Nero was not making a mountain out of a molehill. If anything, he was making a molehill out of a mountain.

When the Baudelaires open the door to their even-smaller-than-expected shack, they find that the floor is covered in small crabs while the ceiling is covered in dripping fungus. They decide that they can learn while at the school nonetheless and they simply need to make the best of an unfortunate situation.

Answer: Language Arts

Violet ends up in Mr. Remora's class for Language Arts and discovers that his lesson plan involves telling personal anecdotes. Notes about his life will, of course, be on a test, so students are expected to take notes. Klaus, meanwhile, ends up in Mrs. Bass' class to learn about measurements in the Metric system. They will have a quiz based on the lengths of different, arbitrary items, of course. Sunny takes her role as an administrative assistant and succeeds with it, learning how to use a typewriter to take dictated letters from Vice-Principal Nero. All three tasks are horribly tedious.

Count Olaf and his henchmen end up hiding underneath the bleachers and formulating a plan to infiltrate the school. The plan, of course, involves having someone on the inside to get at the Baudelaires without his needing to pass by the Advanced Computer System. That's how he gets the idea to speak with Carmelita Spats.

Answer: False

The Baudelaires come across the cafeteria in due time only to find that the new worker there is Larry, Jacquelyn's informant, who also happened to be a clown when they visited Lake Lachrymose. He tries to give over the book that he was required to find, but he quickly finds that it's missing from his backpack, having fallen out in the hallway. The children have no choice but to sit for lunch empty-handed, but in a turn of events they find themselves seated with a pair of polite children-- Isadora and Duncan Quagmire-- who also lost their parents (and their triplet brother, Quigley) in a horrible, tragic fire. They also admit that they, too, lived in the orphan shack, having been bumped up to the broom closet when the Baudelaires arrived. When Violet asks everyone to empty their pockets so that she can invent a method of keeping the floor crabs away, Klaus and Isadora discover that they both have similar spyglass pieces in their possession and this, without hesitation, requires discussion. All of them agree that there must be a connection to everything and head to the library to see if the Incomplete History of Secret Organizations is there. It's not, and they end up getting caught by Vice-Principal Nero after hours.

Larry makes a bold attempt to break into the library that evening, but gets caught by Carmelita.

Answer: A freezer

The Duncan children end up walking through the halls of Prufrock Preparatory only to walk directly into Count Olaf who, weirdly, doesn't seem to recognize that he's reciting a monologue to the wrong orphans. It's clear though that Count Olaf still knows of the Duncan children, having encountered their parents and being aware of their family sapphires, hidden in a vault somewhere.

The only way the kids can escape is when Olaf hears Larry, from Lacrymose waiter, somewhere in the school. Olaf confronts Larry in the cafeteria later on, revealing that he is able to use Carmelita for his needs.

His cronies ends up locking him away in the cafeteria freezer where, surprisingly, Larry is able to call Jacquelyn at Mulctuary Money Management and inform her of the turn of events.

She calls him a cab.

Answer: A horse

All of the children end up at the Prufrock Preparatory pep rally and it only makes things difficult since the festivities are horribly noisy. It's because of this that the Baudelaires don't hear the news that Count Olaf has returned, and by the time the school mascot-- a dead horse (because it can't be beat?)-- is brought to the stage containing Olaf's henchpeople, it's apparent that the infiltration was a big success. Vice-Principal Nero states that because the gym teacher (and the cheerleaders and sports team) of the school has gone, a new coach needed to be hired, even if without a resume.

It is, of course, none other than Count Olaf, but he's now posing as Coach Genghis.