"Arthur" Season Ten Trivia Quiz

Answer: Ten Spot Diner

Every living human member of the Read family, including Grandpa Dave and Grandma Thora, go on a trip together in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Read parents' marriage. The van breaks down and they do not reach their destination. When it breaks down, they are near a diner called the Ten Spot Diner. It is closed, but the janitor lets them inside so they can use the phone to call someone to fix their van. While Mr. Read goes to the phone, Arthur and D.W. get themselves locked in the storeroom. After about 20 minutes, Arthur finds a screwdriver and some pliers in there and uses them to pick the lock on the door. After that, Mr. Read makes dinner for the entire family with the ingredients in the diner. In the end, the entire family has a great time.

This episode is the tenth anniversary of Arthur airing on PBS. Throughout the tenth season, there are several uses of the number "ten." Michael Yarmush, who voiced Arthur in seasons one through five, voices the janitor.

Answer: Binky

A scary movie called "The Squirrels" airs on TV. In the movie, squirrels eat people and take over the world. This traumatizes every kid in Mr. Ratburn's class except Binky, who didn't see it when it aired on TV. They all get scared every time they see or hear a squirrel. They are all afraid to go outside. They all stay inside and finish their homework. Mr. Ratburn decides to teach the kids some true facts about squirrels so they will not be afraid anymore. At one point, Arthur and Buster decide to befriend a squirrel so they will not be afraid of it. They use acorns to lure one. This works, but then a whole pack of squirrels shows up wanting some acorns. Arthur and Buster run inside. Some squirrels get inside, but Ms. Read gets most of them out. One of them gets injured. They take it to the vet. Then, they take it to class (inside a cage). The kids get to see it up close and they are no longer afraid of squirrels.

For most of the episode, Binky is baffled as to why nobody wants to go to the park with him and why everybody is doing their homework except him. It's revealed that he did not see "The Squirrels" when it aired on TV. However, at the end of the episode, he rents the movie. After everybody else is cured, Binky is now traumatized. The other kids invite him to play with them in the park, but he hurries inside and says he has a lot of homework to do.

"The Squirrels" is based on Alfred Hitchcock's movie, "The Birds". After the kids get over their fear of squirrels, Arthur tells them that "The Birds" will be airing on TV that night. It is possible that the kids watched it and then got traumatized by birds.

Answer: Agatha Shelley

Fern's three favorite authors are Agatha Christie, Mary Shelley, and Persimmony Glitchet. Two of them are dead, so Fern cannot write to them. Glitchet has his address written on the back on his books. Fern writes to him and asks for some advice on writing books. He writes back and tells her to read, write, re-write, look for opportunities to publish, and never use her real name. Fern combines the names of her two favorite dead writers to make her pen name. She gets her story published in the elementary school newspaper, but nobody likes it. Francine tells Fern that the story is boring because everyone is happy all the time and nothing bad ever happens.

Fern writes a second letter to Glitchet telling him all of this. He encourages her to rewrite. Fern writes a second story which is much scarier. Francine tells Fern that she likes Agatha Shelley's second story. Later on, Persimmony Glitchet visits the library to do a book signing. The book signing is actually done by his chauffeur. When she goes to look at the books on the shelves, a mysterious man talks to her and notices that she has a Persimmony Glitchet book. Fern tells him that she wrote two letters to Persimmony Glitchet and he responded to both of them. The mysterious man asks for Fern's copy of the book. He then writes in it and hands it back. Fern reads what he wrote and it is revealed that this mysterious man is Persimmony Glitchet. He gets his chauffeur to get him out of there before she can thank him, but she is thrilled to know she met her favorite not-dead author.

Answer: No

It's near the end of the school year. Mr. Ratburn sets one last assignment for the year. The assignment is for the kids to imagine that they are stranded on a desert island and they can only eat one type of food until they are rescued and they have to pick the best one. At first, the kids choose food that is delicious but not nutritious (such as ice cream and potato chips). Mr. Ratburn shoots them down and gives them a second chance. Then, they all pick a healthy food. Brain spends much of the episode trying to think of a perfect food that as everything in it. Eventually, he realizes that no such food exists. So, he calls all his friends. They form a group with each of their food choices. Arthur has eggs, Buster has bread, Francine has vegetables, and Brain has fruit. They explain that people cannot survive on just one type of food for very long and they need all kinds of food from all the food groups. Though Mr. Ratburn never told them to work in a group, he did not forbid it and he praises these kids for thinking of it. They get an A. At the end of the episode, Mr. Ratburn brings in a big ice cream sundae to celebrate the end of the school year.

This episode is the second episode ever about the end of the school year. The first one is "The Short Quick Summer" back in season one. Oddly enough, all the kids are still in third grade after "The Short Quick Summer" and they are still all in third grade after "Desert Island Dish." There's yet another episode about the end of the year in season 19 called "The Last Day". It makes you wonder how many times all these kids repeated third grade. Perhaps the order that the episodes aired is not the order that these events happened chronologically.

Answer: False

She tells the secret to her mother. Her mother promises never to repeat it and tells D.W. not to tell anyone else. Nonetheless, by telling her mother, D.W. told the secret to one person and that's enough to make the correct answer False. The episode establishes that if you tell a secret to just one person, you've still failed to keep the secret.

Answer: Nemo

When a drought hits Elwood City, Arthur and Francine decide to conserve water. They make a bet on who uses less water. The loser has to carry the winner's book bag for a month. Arthur easily wins the bet. Francine gets frustrated because her apartment uses more and more water every day. No matter what she tries, she cannot figure out why this is happening until the end of the episode. One day, she hears a flush.

Her parents are not home and Catherine is in the kitchen, so Francine decides to barge into the bathroom to see who is flushing her toilet. To her shock, it's Nemo.

He has been playing with the flush all this time, and this is why her apartment uses so much water.

Answer: Kate

The Read family go on a TV show where people present a treasure to a hostess, who then determines how much it is worth. They attempt to sell a chair on the show, but it is only worth $25. The hostess then notices that Kate has a blanket with Native American patterns on it.

The hostess says that it is worth $5,000. When Arthur takes the blanket out of Kate's hands, Kate cries. Arthur turns down the sale and returns the blanket to Kate, deciding that keeping his baby sister happy is more important than money. Though the family gets no money, the hostess praises them for learning the true meaning of family treasure.

Answer: Astronaut

When she sees her father watching a documentary about Mars, D.W. gets an idea. She wants to be an astronaut when she grows up so she can be the first person to go to Mars and find out if there's any life there. Some of her friends think they already know the answer because they saw a fictional movie about Mars and they had no idea it was fictional. Mr. Read takes D.W. to a museum where she learns some facts about Mars.

At school, D.W. presents her findings to the whole class. She gets praised for her work and the Tibbles decide that they want to be astronauts too.

Answer: Yes

The Grebes hadn't won a championship since 1918. Some of the kids believed that there was a curse on the team that started back then. At one point in the episode, Buster says that when he goes to the game, the Grebes lose, and when he does not go to the game, they win. This causes Francine to believe that Buster is cursing the team. When the series is tied, Buster initially decides not to go to the final game, believing they will lose because of him.

In the supermarket, he meets three members of the team. He tells them what Francine told him. They tell him that Francine is wrong and that they need him to be in the audience, whether or not there's a curse. Buster shows up at the final game. The Grebes win on a grand slam. Many years later, Buster tells his grandchildren about this game, except he also tells them that the ball sprouted wings and flew up into outer space (and that didn't actually happen).

Answer: He is afraid it will get dirty or damaged

Arthur saves up enough money to buy a fancy new bike. However, for most of the episode, he refuses to ride it. He considers it to be a work of art and he's afraid it might get dirty or damaged. His friends try to convince him that bicycles get damaged but it's more fun to ride a bike and damage it than it is to have a perfectly clean bike and never ride it.

He does not listen to them. One night, he has a nightmare in which he is an old man when he finally decides to ride it, but then it breaks as soon as he gets on it because now he's too big for it.

This nightmare changes his mind. When he wakes up, he decides to join a bike race with his friends. He gets the bicycle dirty but he no longer cares.

Answer: Cycling

He'd been playing those other sports since before this episode. This episode is when he first started doing competitive cycling.

Binky is great at every sport he does when he does it in practice. However, in actual competitions, he always cracks under pressure. He has a participation trophy in swimming which his mother is proud of. He is ashamed of it because he does not consider a participation trophy to be a real trophy. Instead of putting it in the trash can where his mother will find it and take it back out, he rides his bicycle all the way to the dump. On a hill, he passes Mr. Frensky, which astonishes him. Mr. Frensky tells Binky that he is the best cyclist that he has seen since Vance Legstrong. Mr. Frensky encourages Binky to compete in a bicycle race in town.

Binky hangs a Vance Legstrong poster in his room. He constantly debates himself over whether or not he should enter the race. In his imagination, he sees Vance telling him to only worry about himself and not worry about the other cyclists. This encourages Binky to sign up for the race. During the race, Binky gets up the hill a lot faster than everyone else. However, once he gets up the hill, he gets cocky, starts celebrating, and doesn't pay attention to the path. He runs over a stick which causes him to lose control and crash. He reluctantly gets back on the bike and finishes the race. Francine and her father are astonished with Binky's performance because, though he didn't win, he got right back on his bicycle after he crashed and he did not finish in last place. Additionally, while he didn't win the whole race, he won the hill portion. Mr. Frensky gives him a polka dot shirt as his prize. Binky has been proudly wearing it ever since.

PBS stopped showing this episode in 2013, with its last airing being on January 30 of that year. This is because Vance Legstrong is a parody of Lance Armstrong. This character was made because Armstrong was the most famous cyclist in the world when this episode was made (it first aired in the U.S. in 2006). In 2012, Armstrong was convicted of using illegal substances, so "Arthur" stopped showing the episodes with him or any variation of him. This scandal put a new light on Binky's fantasy, in which Legstrong asks "How do you think I got to be the best cyclist in the world?" This question is what convinced Binky to enter the race. Binky assumed the answer to the question was that Legstrong practiced a lot and competed in lots of races. When it turned out that the answer to the question was that he was using illegal substances, PBS stopped airing this episode.

Answer: Ears

D.W. has trouble hearing. Her doctor finds out that she needs an operation. Arthur becomes extra-nice to D.W. because of this, which annoys her. The operation is successful, although Arthur is not thrilled that she is back to her annoying self after it's all over. PBS stopped showing this episode in 2013 because it's part of the same episode as "Binky vs. Binky", which has a character named Vance Legstrong, a parody of Lance Armstrong, who was convicted of using illegal substances in 2012.

Answer: Body movements and hand signals

In this episode, Muffy and Francine come up with their own language, which they teach to Sue Ellen but nobody else. Then, Arthur and Buster come up with their own language which they only use between each other. Then, Brain comes up with a language that is just based on math. George fails to learn any of these languages and then he decides that has no desire to. All of these new languages cause fights between the kids who used to be friends. George comes up with a language that has no words: just body movements and signals.

He thinks this language is perfect because anybody can learn it: even dyslexics (like himself) and deaf people. At first, when he tries to teach it to other people, they make fun of him. Near the end of the episode, the other kids realize that their languages are just causing fights, so they ask George to teach his language to them.

At first, George is excited about the idea because he thinks this will unify everybody and make everybody happy. Then, he sees that Jenna has a broken arm and she will not be able to use his language.

He then suggests that everybody just go back to speaking English. Everybody agrees to this and everybody makes amends with each other at the end of the episode.

Answer: Ming Tsai

There is a cooking contest for kids at Lakewood Elementary School and Ming Tsai is the judge. Arthur decides to make a chocolate cake and though his dad is a chef, he rejects most of his father's advice. His father tells him that the most important ingredient in a cake is baking powder. However, the day before Arthur makes the cake, D.W. wastes an entire can of baking powder. Arthur's father tells him that he has an extra can of baking powder in the garage, but he tells him to be careful not to take the can that says baking soda. Arthur does not listen closely enough and he accidentally takes the baking soda. His cake turns out all wrong and he does not even bring it to school.

While Ming Tsai is trying the other entries, Arthur's father brings in Arthur's creation, which is now all sliced up because it turned out that Arthur made some brownies. Arthur's father explains to Ming Tsai that Arthur was trying to make a cake, but he accidentally used baking soda instead of baking powder and he accidentally made brownies instead. Ming Tsai explains to Arthur that some great recipes are made from accidents. He then tells the story of how pot-stickers were invented. They were supposed to be dumplings, but the chef overcooked them and they got stuck to the pot. However, the emperor loved this accidental recipe and pot-stickers became quite popular. Ming Tsai then tastes Arthur's brownies and he says that they are delicious.

In the end, Ming Tsai names himself the winner of the contest because he gets to try everyone's recipes. He asks the other kids if they would like to be winners too and they say yes. This means that there was no actual contest and the point was just for all the kids to try cooking something and for them to try eating what the other kids cooked. The closing credits confirm that, although this is a cartoon and he is animated, this actually is Ming Tsai voicing his animated self on this show.

Answer: Mail delivery

Mr. Haney allows each kid an opportunity to deliver the faculty mail. Buster is the first volunteer. His first day on the job does not go very well, but then he talks to the city's mail carrier. He gives Buster some good advice. Buster becomes much better at delivering the mail.

At the end of the episode, Mr. Haney re-assigns the job to Arthur, and he asks Buster to train Arthur. Buster tries to train Arthur, but Arthur does not really listen.