Which one was Frank and which was Ernest?

[Agathological]

Now, far be it for me to be the forums new thread necro'er but after being a long time lurker; I could not hold my containment any longer and wanted to join these forums, sadly they seem to be a little on the wane but those that do stay I'll be happy to converse with.

So now that that is our of the way (and this apology know if this question has been asked before but now you know my reason for not searching for it) of you people on the forums which one do you think in the PP talked to the Baudelaires first?

Personally I think the brother that spoke in Sebald Code was Earnest, he mentions 'in' which has been exclusively a villians term.

[The Duchess]

Actually, the word after "in" was associate, so maybe he meant to say associate. But that's a good idea.

[bandit]

Duchess P is right. Because Sebald Code is technically determined by counting every eleventh word in a given message, the four numbers in Frank/Ernest's code are supposed to be skipped; this makes the correct word "associates."

[Dante]

That's not actually correct; skipping all the numbers messes up the rest of the code. It comes out as "I can't tell if would you lumber can't guests too guests." Only by counting the numbers can you get the full message, "Are you in or enemies please respond." Curiously, "in" is just one word away from "associates" - and "enemies" is one word from "out," so if you were to assume an error, you could read the "correct" version of the message as being either "in or out" (Ernest?) or "associates or enemies" (Frank?).

At any rate, Chapter Three features three encounters with one of the brothers, and the second and third are clearly the same brother while the first is different. As I recall, the second and third brother is more brusque than the second, so perhaps he's Ernest?

Edit: Mixed up which brothers are clearly the same. Whenever I've written these posts it's been at a time when I haven't had time to check.

[Sophie Baudelaire]

I thought the third one was Dewey...?

(I may be wrong; it's been a while since I read TPP)

[Dante]

The third one is suggested to be the same as the second one, although strictly speaking there's nothing stopping any of the brothers from posing as each other (i.e. the second one pretending he hadn't met the Baudelaires yet, or the first one then pretending to be the second brother again for the Baudelaires' third meeting, etc.). If you want to believe that Dewey shows up in Chapter Three, it's really up to you, but I think it's more likely they were just Frank and Ernest (either F-E-E or E-F-F).

Edit: As documented in my last post, I mixed up which two brothers are the same as I hadn't had the time to check the chapter myself. I've corrected it now. You can tell because the first brother says he's too busy to explain how the hotel is organised, while the second brother is about to explain to the Baudelaires how the hotel is organised when he is called away, and when the third brother shows up, he mentions that he'd been just about to explain it. Unless he's both a liar and contradictory, the third brother is likely to be the same as the second brother rather than the first.