The Little Mouse’s Book of Riddles, Teacher’s Edition, Version 1

Picture: Beatrix Potter, “Tailor of Gloucester”

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​In this day of increasingly bitter human polemic, here is an occasion to relax while considering the examination required to become an honorary murid and enter a nest of mice.

The questions were compiled by the teams of mice assigned to eat books. They read as they eat and send passages of interest to mice back to HQ for collation and study. 

Q: “Her feet beneath her Petticoat,
Like little mice stole in and out….”--

as if they were afraid of what?
 
A: The light.

Sudden light
at night
gives mice
a fright.

[Sir John Suckling, “The Bride”
Picture: Artist: Cole, Herbert; Book Title: The rime of the ancient mariner.oldbookillustrations.com]
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Q: For which peril to body or soul
did Dioscorides prescribe
swallowing a mouse whole?

A: The eating of aconite
also called wolfsbane,
monkshood, blue rocket,
and leopard’s bane.
Do not eat it by day.
Do not eat it at night.
Do not keep it in your pocket.
 
[Anna Pavord, The Naming of Names
Picture: "Monkshood in Bloom" by Alida Withoos (1661–1730). www.oldbookillustrations.com]
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​Q: Can you imagine musical tones
called lark, canary, or grouse,

cockatoo or crow,
cat, dog, or mouse,

because they vaguely resemble
the cries of those animals?
 
A: I can imagine a lot of things,
especially better questioning.
 
[A. H. Munsell, A COLOR NOTATION, 1st ed 1905; 2nd, 1907. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26054/26054-h/26054-h.htm. 
​Picture: PublicDomainPictures.Net]
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Q: In which contexts are a mouse,
a smooch, and a dish synonymous?
 
A: (1) This examination, and
(2) the screenplay of “Ball of Fire,” by Billy Wilder and Charles Bracket (1941): “We'll be stepping. Me and this smooch...I mean, the dish, I mean, the mouse. You know, hit the jiggles for a little rum boogie.”

Providing either answer earns full credit.
Providing both earns no credit.
We don’t like showoffs.
 
[Picture: Pair of mice on dish, Bing & grondahl no. 1562
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​Q: What is the mouse king’s
own palindrome?

A clue
for you:

he whispers it while sitting
high on his throne.
 
A: Sum summus mus:
I am the mightiest mouse.

[Barry J. Blake, Secret Language, Oxford, 2010, 15
Picture: artstation.com]



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Q: Identify the Russian
who court-marshalled and hanged
without legal discussion
a mouse for climbing bang
over his cardboard fortress.
 
A: Tsar Peter III, but the name of any current or past leader will earn half credit.
 
[Calasso, The Ruin of Kasch, Penguin Books,276
Picture: “Coronation portrait of Peter III of Russia; Public domain]
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Q: Which French dictator spoke
with an accent and broke
most of Europe before himself
was broken? Who plunged like a hawk  
out of the sky to pierce a mouse
and kill without squeak or squawk?
 
A: “Like a true vulture, Napoleon with an eye not less telescopic, and with a taste equally coarse in his ravin, could descend from the most dazzling heights to pounce on the leveret in the brake, or even on the field mouse amid the grass.”—Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
 
[Picture: “Noiseless Wings Behind Him,” by Charles L. Bull. Book Title: The haunters of the silences. From www.oldbookillustrations.com]
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Q: When a scrap of paper blows into court,
what does it take to drag it out?

A: A yoke of oxen,
​so say the Chinese.
But a mischief of mice
can gnaw it to pieces.

[F.L. Lucas, Style
Picture: Artist unknown, “Eurasian Harvest Mice - View of harvest mice and their nest among grasses and branches.” Book Title: Brehms Tierleben, vol. 2. From oldbookillustrations.com]

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Q: When the Sultan sends a ship
to the granaries of Egypt
does he worry whether mice
in the hold are comfortable,
well fed and free of lice?
 
A: No, if we can believe the answer the famous dervish gave to Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide.
 
[Picture: "Göke" (1495) was the flagship of Kemal Reis. Contemporary miniature from the Ottoman period, Topkapı Palace Library, Istanbul]