There are a lot of interesting characters seen throughout Final Fantasy 9, but Ragtime Mouse might be the strangest of them all. Diligent players will eventually come across this eccentric creature, and they'll be tossed into a quiz.

There is a multitude of true and false questions to answer, and you'll receive a mass of Gil and possibly experience for their time. Getting all the Ragtime Mouse encounters to show up can be a bit of a pain, but it is possible to "cheese the system" a bit to coax the creature out of hiding. Here's a look at everything players will need to know about Ragtime Mouse and its curious quizzes.

Updated January 15, 2024: The Ragtime Mouse's quiz is a great way to obtain a ton of gil and a great add-on. We've added some handy details on how to actually answer the questions posed by this creature.

Where Is The Ragtime Mouse?

It's not so much a question of where Ragtime Mouse is but rather when it is. The creature can appear as an encounter in any forest throughout Gaia, and the number of times it can show up correlates to specific 'moments' within the game.

How far you've progressed is directly tied to the number of times the Ragtime Mouse can be encountered, but (thankfully) progressing past a 'checkpoint' will not cause you to miss out on any potential questions.

It's all cumulative, and if you never bother looking for Ragtime Mouse until the endgame, you'll still be capable of completing its entire quiz.

Ragtime Mouse's spawning 'checkpoints' are as follows:

• After you have left the Evil Forest, but before you arrive at the Outer Continent, the Ragtime Mouse can be encountered up to four times.
• The second checkpoint is after you make your way to the Outer Continent but before obtaining the Hilda Garde III. Ragtime Mouse can be seen up to ten times in total.
• After obtaining the Hilda Garde III, all the available encounters for the quiz beast will be available.

How Often Does Ragtime Mouse Show Up?

Unfortunately, this is where things get a bit "grindy." Ragtime Mouse only has a 1/365-step chance to show up (this improves to 1/231 after the Blue Narciss is obtained).

It's important to also note that the encounter will not show up until 20 seconds have passed on the world map.

With such a broad encounter possibility and so many other encounters along the way, it's easy to see why it could be difficult to find the Ragtime Mouse effectively. Thankfully, there is an "exploit" that you can use.

If you press the movement buttons in very slight increments, you will likely avoid any encounters with the local wildlife, but Ragtime Mouse's encounter rate isn't related to this "trick." By moving slowly and stuttering, we can filter out all encounters except those containing Ragtime Mouse and other 'friendly' monsters.

One clever strategy is to use this trick in forests. You'll know that you are performing the trick correctly if your player character (usually, but not always Zidane) moves, but the animation for leaves trailing behind you does not play; you can be sure that you're moving the analog stick just enough to prevent increasing the normal random encounter step counter.

All Answers To Ragtime Mouse's Quiz

There are 16 possible questions to answer, with 15 of them being completely random in their order.

Every encounter poses a statement to you, and the challenge is to decide whether or not the statement is true or false. To answer, you'll need to attack either the cross (False) or the circle (True) monsters that appear alongside Ragtime Mouse.

It is important you do this with a single-target attack, so just use Attack.

Here's a look at all the possible statements and their answers.

The 16th and final question that Ragtime Mouse asks will always be:

Despite this being the right answer, it is, in fact, not possible to 'defeat' Ragtime Mouse in the conventional way. Attacking Ragtime Mouse, even with an attack that deals more damage than it has HP, will simply lead to the monster fleeing the battle, only to ask the same question again in the next encounter.

This is also why it is not possible to use an attack that hits the entire enemy party to try and cheat the system.

Players who manage to answer all of Ragtime Mouse's questions correctly will receive up to 70,000 gil, some EXP, a Protect Ring, and an Achievement/Trophy (on the remastered version of the game).