[Galadriel55]

Much of the arguing seems to depend upon whether sidetracking amount to failiure.

It's like with opposites; sometimes the antonym of a word has a different meaning than the word with a "not" in front. F. ex., happy. Unhappy is quite the opposite. Yet so is not happy. But the latter can mean any number of things that do not include happy, like simply neutral but not necessarily unhappy.

It is like that here too. Saruman goes to the antonym of completing the quest - he works against it. Radagast, on the other hand, just puts the "not" in front of it.

So where do we pace the pass line now? Does one fail if he turns against the Istari's original intention, or even if he does not strictly stick to the original plan even though he does not go against it either? Does one need to dedicate everything and till the end to "pass the test", or is it enough not to be evil in order to, well, be considered not evil and therefore pass?

Where do you draw the line of passing?