Hi, folks, newbie here.
I read every page! Every post! Some fantastic stuff going on, thank you! I was desperate to see some theorizing.
That said, I want to bring up a couple things that haven't shown up here (much?) yet, relating to the anagram unscrambling with alternate letter sets:
Beatrice 2 refers in BB to LS#2 to a letter she sent LS that may not have arrived and thus is probably not in our book ("the only letter missing is the one I sent you"); assumedly this is not only a piece of correspondence but another letter of the alphabet, and this could have implications for how the anagrams can be unscrambled. The letters as they stand spell "Beatrice Sank," yes, but we're implored to keep rearranging! What letter could be missing? What might it add? I think there might be something there.
She also says that she has only the letters in his office, and those of his initials (and on the page before the letter to the editor, "L" and "S" are cut out from Beatrice Letters), that is, in BB to LS #3: "yet another letter for my collection, including the letters of your initials, the letters I found in your office, and the letters I write you, never knowing if you have received them,"so I've tried unscrambling the main set with the addition of LS, as well, but without much luck, so far. I'd be interested to see what anyone can get from adding those, though.
Also, there is a silhouette of a second girl on the cover, yes, but on its side, the ribbon framing the images looks quite like a D--another letter. Perhaps there might be something in unscrambling the main set with the addition of this D on the cover? Or with the D and the LS?
Also, all the alphabet letters that there are to punch out are found in their correspondence letters, either written on them somewhere or evoked (the hatpin "i," the metal tool "T," the hair "C," the leech "S") but in the letter with the coffee stain, the potential R is only on the card (or the daughter of the duchess), and the coffee ring most resembles an O: could the letters be unscrambled differently replacing the R with an O? Or by adding an O?
Someone also mentioned not realizing the "U" was a "U"--I think they were referring to the C, but what might turn up using it as a "U," I wonder?
Or, indeed, using any combination of these various alternates/additions?
For example, if you add LS and the potential "D" on the cover, you can make "Snickets are bald." But I don't suppose that one makes any sense.
Snickets brae lad. . . Something!
Still, maybe someone can do something with all of that! Here's hoping!
Oh! Last thing for the nonce, someone asked who the initials were. A lot of them have been mentioned variously through the posts, but I thought I'd compile them for ease. . . I'm stumped on R., but this might be someone we don't know yet, or who we only know by another name (the woman with hair but no beard? "Justice" Strauss? Mrs. Bass?) Some of them could be any of a few people, I suppose, but pretty good guesses are:
LS to BB#1: O. (annoyance, nitwit, ugly, one-eyebrowed): Olaf
LS to BB#4: E. and G. (people he regularly argues with): Esme OR Ernest and Geraldine Julienne (the terrible reporter with the Daily Punctilio)
LS to BB#5, Question #2: B (early friend/something of Beatrice#1's): Bertrand. Question #9, "C. realizes S. is not. . ." Charles and Sir, "N. realizes he is not worthy of the V." Nero and the violin.
Y, I have no idea on, any takers?
Edit: Sorry, double posted! I'll just mash them together.. Thanks for catching that and letting me know!
More! This covers a lot of things, but I wanted to get it all out. I've been about fit to burst! So many strange little things have been collecting, and I can't figure them all out together, but hopefully someone else can mash them together with other evidence and get some more fun theories going.
Firstly, I say we shouldn't believe as solid anything Snicket writes. I say everything in these books is suspect, including names given for people. He's already hidden things inside the books baldly ("it is not enough for me to write, 'My dearest sister'". . . etc), and the website suggests (1) he's not who we think he is, (2) he's filled the books with 'secret messages.' And Beatrice 2 says his accounts differ wildly from the accounts from the Baudelaire children. If he's researching after the fact, as he says, he may be getting things quite wrong just from sketchy research. He could also be intentionally flubbing, as a means of catching attention from those who know better, or in order to defame/protect Baudelaires or others in the books. . . In one of the letters, he mentions having to call O. "L" and L. "O."--couldn't he be writing as another person? No one (that I can remember) ever refers to Lemony by name, in dialogue--he's often "the other" Snicket sibling, or things to that effect, which I find suspicious.
Oh, and just to weigh in on the BB 1 and 2 issues. . .
I'm guessing B2 will turn out to be a sibling, full or half. If B2 is ten at the time of these writings as her card suggests (and it's "I am the ten year old girl at the corner table," not "I'll be the. . ." which I think implies she actually IS ten, rather than pretending to be), it doesn't necessarily put her between Klaus and Sunny--if Sunny is old enough to be on the radio, it could be any number of years after The End ends. Eight years, fifteen years. . . In any case, she could be significantly younger than Sunny. Or she could be the same age as Sunny, I suppose, if Sunny's so much a prodigy as she seems to be. But that would all, of course, require one or more Baud parents (1) having survived the fire, (2) having had something extramarital or post widow(er)ing going on, or (3) having snuck a kid off at Sunny's birth.
I liked the idea that LS's telegram wishing her a girl, a boy, or twins, in that order, might be accurate--young children aren't often allowed in at births, and it wouldn't be hard to spirit away a baby when your kids weren't watching. But here's something: LS says in the same telegram that he understands they're "still alive," and she's rumored pregnant, has anyone wondered whether or not that might be contemporary with the Series books? "Understand [you're] still alive" sounds like it wasn't likely that they were; maybe the Baudelaire parents weren't killed in the fire, after all, and have been out there ready to pop out another baby Baudelaire. These books have passed plenty enough time to have had a pregnancy go through to term. Or if even just the Baudelaire mother survived (and had taken pregnant just before the books began), her last kid could be born recently or soon around The End. If Baudmum died, then, in The End, and the last kid was B2, the baby V, K and S inherit would be a new sibling and a suitable ray of hope ("would've died of despair without me," etc), and also an orphan.
Something else that someone mentioned that I liked was Kit Snicket, and how she was somewhat obscured. . I see no reason her child wouldn't be Beatrice 2 (making B2 a few years younger than Sunny), and she might well be someone else in disguise, mightn't she? Perhaps mother Baudelaire. . .? I know it's unlikely her children wouldn't recognize her, but obscured and not expecting to see her, well. . Anyway, LS said his dearest sister came up with the salad mentioned in (I think it was) Slippery Slope, and in that same book, Sunny remembers the Baudelaire mom making the same thing. Couldn't they be the same person? I'm generally a proponent of the B1=Baudelaire mother theory, but she could be the Baudelaire aunt--unmarried, still a Baudelaire, just Bertrand's sister (maybe implying the Baud children get their allergies from their father, who shares them with his sister). Leaving mother Baudelaire open to being LS's sister. (And LS's neice is an orphan, so it's either something like that or Kit's going to kick it in the next book, anyway.)
And, anyway, just to reaffirm my first claim, up there. . . I see no reason he couldn't be changing names, in the text. It's not fair to obsessives, but it's possible. Also possible: the woman introducing herself as Kit Snicket could've been lying about her identity. LS says that running into that woman changed the Baud' lives for the better, but TPP showed things getting worse, so maybe there's some other reason she's an improvement.
And lastly (for now), I also see no reason why there couldn't be a love child/love affair/etc in this series. . . Because! even if Kit Snicket is who she says she is, Snicket would be her maiden name, and she is extremely pregnant. (That's no guarantee she's not married, but even with as liberated as a lot of these women are, they seem to have generally taken their husbands' names.) And Dewey Denouement says her name with his last dying breath. This all sounds like evidence of some sort of unmarried love affair to me. Maybe the Baudelaire *father* survived, and is behind this pregnant Kit stuff? That'd make the spawn a Baudelaire easily enough. . .
All right, all right, that's it, for now! Thanks!
Snickets brae lad. . . Something!
Y, I have no idea on, any takers?
