The riddle of the hidden images in the West Gate.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by monks

But can you make 99 predictions from your understanding?

I can make arbitrarily many predictions, especially if I'm allowed to be wrong.

Originally Posted by monks

Please read my previous posts. I'm not lying- I have better things to do beleive me.

Oh, I wasn't accusing you of lying! I think I skimmed over the actual question in my post, which was: how do you weed out the spurious 'connections' between pairs which aren't actually linked? For example, I could name multiple significant mountains - let's say Thangorodrim, Orodruin, Erebor, Gundabad, Taniquetil, Caradhras, Mindolluin. You wouldn't argue that Tolkien made every possible pair of those represent two sides of his triangles - but as I demonstrated, you could easily construct a 'symbolic interpretation' for every random pair. So how do you figure out which ones he was actually connecting? The obvious answer is "because they look connected already", but that's a very circular argument.

I'm also intrigued by your reading habits. You say you've only read LotR two or three times, and Silm once - but you also casually cite Vinyar Tengwar, and knew one of Tom Bombadil's names that only comes up in a single passage (but without knowing who that passage describes as giving him said name). Not really a question here - just a certain amount of bafflement.

hS

hS