The Lord of the Rings Code

[The Barrow-Wight]

Hidden within the texts of The Lord of the Rings are many secret messages that might be discovered by the perceptive Middle-earth scholar. Using the scientific method know as Equidistant Letter Separation (ESL), the words from J.R.R. Tolkien's books can be disected, revealing meanings deep within them.

Solve The Lord of the Rings Code .

* Post your findings here on this thread! My first finding is shown on the LotRC page.

** In case you didn't notice, this is Mirth.

*** Completely confused? Ask here.

[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

A mysterious message is to be exposed. Here's something for all those wannabe warriors out there.
ELS:20
Line 3: atwh = What, 6: Poor, 7: Nerd, 4-5-6: Has, 1: To, 6: Do, 7: ot = To, 14: eb = Be, 7: eroh = Hero
This is a simple question asked very often: What a poor nerd has to do to be a hero?
Luckily I have managed to break the code and find an anwer for you ( on lines 8 and 3): Eat tea!
edit: oops, am I allowed to rearrange the letters (like I did) or should I use only already existing words (what makes it a bit harder)?

[The Barrow-Wight]

An interesting discovery. I've never eaten tea, so I may never be a hero

From what I have read, you can occasionally find common words with their letters mixed slightly (like in HWAT for what), but usually the messages are best when the words are plainly and orderly spelled out. Still, I'm glad you were able to find this message.

[Oddwen]

My goodness. Such goings on!

With the ELS set to 9, the number of the fellowship (but also the number of Black Riders), I seem to have uncovered what seemingly is are tabloid headlines.


55.DRAT! 19.HENNA 26.WONT (won't) 68.GET ON (the) 73.MOON. 16.FAT 12.SEER 27.FEES (are a) 25.DEAL. 50.DIM 28-31.FAUN 4.DID 84.REEK. 20.DEAD 28.FIT (in) 10.BIER. 24.WHET 5.WET 1-3.TEA 13.WHEE!

I do believe that Tolkien was making a few predictions.

Men with dyed hair will never get to the moon. I don't know if this came true or not.

Seers who are fat have better prices. This I don't know either.

A faun who was not-too-bright smelled. Is this some prediction concerning Narnia?

The dead fit in thier biers. I would hope so. Or wait...maybe he was predicting the henious rise in obesity!

Whet wet tea, whee! I'll have to leave this for wiser heads than mine. (Tea again? Hmm.)



And then, on lines 13-18, there is a cryptic message. "IN IN IS". So getting an idea, I took the third letter of my uncovered message and discovered this:

AEANENOAEFSAIADRKAIIWTTAE

I found an online anagrammer, and came up with the cry that Manwë gave when Ar-Pharazon stepped foot upon the blessed shore:

"A(i)! ADA INANE SEA FOE!"

Then again using the magic number 9, I got this:

ANEADAWA

Which turned into:

"Awe and aa!"

Which was obviously the reaction of Ar-Pharazon to the blessed shore.

"Don't the great stories never end?"

They might, but my posts don't. This is a bit involved...


Are we allowed to find words by veering off in totally different directions?
I.E.,

T E M L I I G E Y F W E B I T A E V T N S I D E O T S S H D R Q T
G R T E G G Y M D D S M T R H H A D P D H O T T M S R H Y R S O E
Y O D L D O N W O H E T K L R N I D O I P S G U A D L E E A S U A
S D I D R S E I S O I S Y G E E O S O V T N I I Y A T N I N P N H ??

[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

Whet wet tea, whee!

That's interesting Oddwen! It might have something to do with the message I found. If you drink watery tea as a whet, you can become a hero and that's cool (whee!). Or maybe this mantra has some deeper meaning that is not meant to be revealed to us.

Here's something about the ents' true nature. (ELS:3)
9-10-11: WOE! 16: ENT 8: LAM 5: MUTT! but also 16: ENT 1: HAY 7: COW.
Oh, the ents really can show those stupid orcs, but they are also very nature friendly and they feed all the cows that stray into Fangorn. Aren't the ents nice creatures!

[Elennar Starfire]

This looks like lots of fun...I shall have a go when I have a bit more time!

[Firefoot]

I don't think it can get anymore blunt than this:

156 || D I A N A D I E E U O W E H A O. As you see, JRRT apparently either hated this Diana person so much he wanted her to die or he knew that she would. Poor, poor Diana.

[The Perky Ent]

362 on 3: Ice 347 on 3: few


Yes, i know. I'm really bad at this....


As for the Diana Die, maybe he was foreshadowing the car crash of princess diana?

[Theron Bugtussle]

Used ELS of 9, rows indicated below

(If someone can help me format this in a courier-type font for fixed width character spacing, it would help!)

109 || D E L E E R L O O O T O G P E G A A M H R D I U M S R U O F E H T
110 || R A A N S D R F E K H R E Y D F A D S O S E O L N O L D H E E F E
111 || A E L L R I I N L V R S T D I S I O R D D M C I D W B R L U D L T
112 || R C T S C T O T S E H A W I E E E C I L A E O H O S R M T N T M N
113 || D S L E A D R A I L R A I O R O I W E F C R E A A R A E T E R O H
114 || D D N A G B A F E W B H E O D D G C W I E G D I E H F I S N A E F
115 || I L D F T S E R N A E E V O D E S H O R H D R B O E T U E R R S I
116 || A R D R T U D E D C C N R W H O N L E D D H P M E U M S L T C K E
117 || R K C E N T W Y D E E D F T R C T B H E S W E T S H E R T A S C O
118 || P I R I H W E E G T H A I R D F N E E N F F H A F H T T E A N F R
119 || M S D I H D G E E A A F M O R R E I S E T P O F A R T T M E O E A
120 || U E A T W D I I T E O E E T B R T D R G W T D L F N H R R A I E B
121 || E L D E W R R D H F R C D T G E R W O M I R D N R G G H E A O

For reasons that will become clear, I used only UP and DOWN directions searching for secret coded messages. Text-encoded messages are in the following pattern:

message

(Starting line numbers and DIRECTIONS indicated in parentheses after each line.)

Explanatory comments.

|| Here is the message I found. ||

feat: do or die sea raid

(feat-121 UP, do-111 DOWN, or-121 UP, die-120 UP, sea-112 DOWN, raid-117 UP)

Author's fantasy--a Norse viking, involved in murder, rapine, pillage, etc. Note the UP and DOWN in the message encoding, perhaps in line with the nautical wave action.

bar: met doe eye coed, two demi...

(bar-120 UP, met-116 DOWN, doe-114 UP, eye-116 DOWN, coed-117 UP, two-117 UP, demi-121 UP)

Landfall, let the carousing begin. In a social establishment, the raider met someone that caught his fancy. There is a lot of up and down in the message, though, to be sure, the last phrase seems to be incomplete. Both words are up, however, perhaps signifying prominence.

rig raft...tent

(rig-121 UP, raft-112 DOWN, tent-120 UP)

A positive action, breaking with, or escaping from the ship and the life led in the past. And still more up and down. The message may have somewhat to say about why....

lest fat sow get me--fie! gene rot

(lest-,116 UP fat-119 UP, sow-109 DOWN, get-109 DOWN, me-119 DOWN,fie-114 DOWN, gene-120 UP, rot-118 DOWN)

Apparently, the life left behind from involved attachment that was...undesirable.

[Elennar Starfire]

Bored in school, I worked this out from The Road Goes Ever On:

"Go run! Odor is he!"

Perhaps I'm not so good at this...but it's fun anyways!

[mark12_30]

(like in HWAT for what),

HWAT is clearly a modernization of HWAET, the opening word of Beowulf, meaning 'hearken or listen'.