It seems to me that there is more to Maggot than meets the eye. Remember in ch.7 In the House of Tom Bombadil it says,
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It no longer surprised them; but he made no secret that he owed his recent knowledge largely to Farmer Maggot, whom he seemed to regard as a person of more importance than they had imagined.
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It is hard to tell what this means, but we know that Maggot is probably not as ignorant to some things as we think. I'm not sure (and I doubt) that the Gaffer has anything to do with the Tom-Maggot connection. So, I think that The Barrow-Wight is correct in saying
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The Gaffer was smarter than he let on. And there's no doubt that Maggot was more than he appeared.
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However, I'm not sure if it was because of sturdiness.