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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Mr. Thoth, a resident of the home for senior citizens, wakes from a doze and mentions to Oedipa that his grandfather rode for the ______________.
(a) Pony Express.
(b) Continental Railroad.
(c) Couriers.
(d) Cavalry.

2. Who does Oedipa try to call from a phone booth before she heads to the bookstore?
(a) Driblette.
(b) Mucho.
(c) Metzger.
(d) Fallopian.

3. What scientific rule does the Nefastis Machine violate?
(a) The WASTE Law.
(b) First Law of Thermodynamics.
(c) The Law of Triads.
(d) Second Law of Thermodynamics.

4. Tristero y Calavera set up his own postal system and called himself El Desheredado, which meant what?
(a) The Desperate.
(b) The Dangerous.
(c) The Disinherited.
(d) The Disenfranchised.

5. What was the name of the author of the preface of the "Plays of Ford, Webster, Tourneur and Wharfinger," who Oedipa travels to the Cal State campus to find?
(a) John Nefastis.
(b) Stanley Koteks.
(c) Clerk Maxwell.
(d) Emory Bortz.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who does Oedipa find in a pseudo-Mexican apartment building in Berkeley?

2. How does Oedipa end up at the desk of Stanley Koteks?

3. Oedipa recites the couplet from the play which mentions Trystero and Bortz and says the quote came from a pornographic version of the play which was held where?

4. Genghis Cohen gives Oedipa a supposed translation from an article in an 1865 issue of Bibliotheque des Timbrophiles, which recounts a great schism in Tristero during what time period?

5. The pattern of information Oedipa sees forming in Chapter 4 has to do with what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What connection does Oedipa make between the old German stamp with Thurn and Taxis printed on it which has a post horn, resembling the WASTE symbol, in each corner and the scene from The Courier's Tragedy?

2. What are the four alternatives Oedipa comes up with to explain her discoveries concerning the Tristero?

3. Why does Oedipa consider her job as co-executor to be similar to Driblette's job as director of a play?

4. Why does Nefastis contend that only a sensitive person can work his machine?

5. What is the paradox that Oedipa discovers concerning the Trystero couplet from Driblette's play?

6. When Oedipa visits Vesperhaven House, what does Mr. Thoth tell her about his dream?

7. When Oedipa and Metzger go back to The Scope in Chapter 4, Mike Fallopian explains that there exists what kind of underground group?

8. In addition to visiting John Nefastis, why does Oedipa need to go to Berkeley?

9. What is the story behind the founding of Inamorati Anonymous?

10. What causes Oedipa to realize that every source of information on the Tristero can somehow be traced to Inverarity?

(see the answer keys)

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