Pica-Ludica: Meeting Dr Cranium is essential to the game, yes. You'll need a certain item from him later on. Even if you didn't need to see him, you would miss out on a very funny character with hilarious dialogue, if you were to skip him. :) Not to mention that he's the only source of health potions and antidotes in the game.
You have doors to your right and your left in the hallway. Open them. I don't remember which one is it, but behind one of them you'll find a lot of baby antwerps (... and you will, indeed, be "antwerped" :D). Once the antwerps are loose, you'll be able to bait the trap.
hoarmurath: I opened the door to get antwerped before I posted here. I tried it again after reloading today, and it still gives me the same answer and does not let me bait it. Is there some sort of intelligence requirement or something that I am missing? Because the question tree to identify the animal is different from what I've seen from a let's play video. The TRAP doesn't actually tell me anything about avocados, it just says that I am obviously trying to catch a baby antwerp.
There is no Intelligence check, as far as I'm aware. Also, there are several question chains for the same animal in the TRAP, if I remember correctly, so the fact that you didn't get the same one as the LPer is not a problem in itself.
Here are a couple of things that you might check:
- When the TRAP told you that you're trying to catch a baby antwerp, did you reply "Yes"? (A stupid question to ask, I know, but sometimes it can be a tiny detail like that. If the TRAP didn't mention avocado for you, that probably means you haven't finished the question chain)
- When you try to bait the trap, do you simply drag the sandwich from your inventory, or do you click on the inventory icon on the TRAP first? (More unlikely solution, since the machine says it hasn't been programmed yet)
Try to do the question chain again, and keep answering YES/NO until it mentions avocado. I think that might be the problem. Ironically enough, you can get stuck like this sometimes in point-n-click games when you actually know what to do. Happens to me from time to time as well, when I play from memory instead of playing "properly" and finding out all information/clues as the game intended. ^^