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Ooh; where did you find "Andwise Roper"? In LotR, he is only referred to as "Sam's uncle Andy". [googles] Ah! He's in a family tree in Appendix C, that's where. Well, I never. It wasn't until pretty recently that I ever learned what a rope-walk is; I had always pictured it as something built of...

And Sam sang the Gil-Galad song!

I thought it was way too short. It was almost a "good-parts version", jumping from one important scene to the next with no travel in between. I missed the landscapes, though I must admit in retrospect that they're awfully difficult to render in audio-only!

Jumping in on this discussion very late, but: we know from LotR that many Hobbit children were born in the year after Sauron's defeat with fair hair "which had previously been rare in the Shire". I believe some sort of magic is involved. Genetics does not determine everything in Middle Earth!

I take this as evidence (albeit weak evidence) that Orcs are immortal, like Elves. Other, more elaborate, explanations can be imagined, but the simplest is that some of the Orcs recognized the swords because they had seen them before, during the First Age. Of course, that idea presents many...

I always assumed (without evidence) that they were made by the same smith at the same time and with the same basic design, and that was what made them "mates".

Mandos may have simply held this knowledge close. Not a talkative guy, in any case. The finding of the Elves was fated, so there was no need to go blabbing about the Fëar already in his keeping . . .

I'm not sure if it is still much current, but when I was younger the dismissive counter-cultural spelling of "America" here in the US was "Amerika". I never did know why, exactly, or where this came from, but Merriam-Webster online says this spelling represents the "racist or fascist aspect of...

Perhaps it was an empty threat (or at least exaggerated). Eowyn might have held up as well as Hurin, and defied Sauron until it was he that was exhausted!

That makes me think of Bujold's The Curse of Chalion. The five gods have fated the removal of the curse - but another generation goes by before their fate is accomplished. The protagonist at one point wonders how many others might have been sent out before him on his hard, hard road by the gods...

I think it was in a book by Richard Feynman - no, maybe Robert Silverberg - anyway, you can count up to 1023 on ten fingers. In binary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_binary Aha! It was Frederik Pohl.

As a child, and into my teens, I poured over (and over and over) the nonsense stories and poems of Edward Lear. I still remember a lot: Far and few, far and few are the lands where the Jumblies live their heads are green and their hands are blue and they went to sea in a sieve

Divide into six is really not at all easy, especially if you want all the pieces the same size. Dividing into six requires that you slice from edge to center -- and stop there! Very hard to do with a metal disk. cf "pieces of eight"...

I think you left out the words "makes no sense" after "Radagast". But really, it makes little sense even if Sauruman (my fingers always make him a dinosaur, all on their own) Saruman started out good, or managed to deceive even Gandalf up until the encounter at Isengard. Heading straight to Bag...

Odola has it just as I understand the poem. "Gather" is a verb here, meaning bring together: anything that is dispersed as smoke can never be assembled again. Similarly, years gone by can never be revisited. It is all sadness and grief, quite suitably in a lament for the fallen.

I just pulled my copy of A Hole is to Dig; I'll see if I can get the grandkids interested in it (two years old). And being named James, James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree was one of my own favorites as a child.

Was Feanor evil from the beginning? We don't know of any actual evil acts he committed before the births of his sons. Can evil be inherited by offspring retroactively?

In alliterative verse, the break in the middle of each line is a medial caesura, and it does indicate a pause in speaking. In modern translations, it is usually marked by a comma or a period, so it's more like a rest in music, though its length is up to the reader rather than the...

It's the same word for both music and poetry: caesura. Merriam-Webster online: cae·su·ra | \ si-ˈzyu̇r-ə , -ˈzhu̇r- \ plural caesuras or caesurae\ si-ˈzyu̇r-(ˌ)ē , -ˈzhu̇r- \ Definition of caesura 1in modern prosody : a usually rhetorical break in the flow of sound in the middle of a line...

Heh: this puts me in mind of the publisher's admonition to Stephen Hawking as he was writing A Brief History of Time -- "for each equation you include in the book, you'll reduce your readership by half". In the end, he included only one equation, and still it may be the most purchased but unread...