Jake Sugarman John Gorman reads at Launderette.

As anticipated, the annual Lit Crawl offered hundreds of readers across the East Village and the Lower East Side the opportunity to drink, schmooze and, in one instance, square off in a contest of literary acumen with their favorite poets and novelists. “Nerd Jeopardy” was sponsored by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, but house authors Will Hermes, Paul La Farge and Alina Simone lost to a team of laymen going by the name of “Whale Blubber.” (The Daily Double question: “The first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy would have been a veritable house party if only Lisbeth had listened to this master sampler.” The answer: “Girl Talk with the Dragon Tattoo.”) Meanwhile on East Sixth Street and Second Avenue, the Laundrette laundromat hosted “Dirty Laundry: Loads of Prose,” a collection of stain-inspired short stories. The material wasn’t everyone’s cup of Tide: Most regulars scurried to the washing machines at the back of the store.