3. LUTHIEN = lie + hunt

Yup!

1. Heating alcohol confuses unpleasant character.
2. Wronged king wanders among Central Asian mountains to discover her.
LUTHIEN: Deception and pursuit mingle for enchantress.
4. Radiant maiden is found where a backward age meets contemporaneity.
5. She is central to the current thing, we hear.
6. Muddled swamp track leads to another wronged ruler.
7. After a slight rearrangement she becomes fighting fit.

My mind is getting rather fixated on certain words, even though some are obviously not correct. The first thing I thought of when reading 6 is "bog" for swamp, and now I can't get Gorbag out of my head as the easiest anagram. Quite the wronged ruler!

Also becoming fixated on a certain maiden, but can't get anything to fit.

No, not Gorbag- though I'm sure he'd have agreed with the "wronged" part. You're looking for an actual ruler, not just an officer. There are many synonyms for swamp...

4. May be a bit hard. "Contemporaneity" replaces a much simpler word/concept.

As you see, I'm quite willing to give out clues, lest this drag on for ever again.:)

Arien? Not confident but she was certainly radiant and her name has era backwards in it. But get stuck there.

Arien it is!

1. Heating alcohol confuses unpleasant character.
2. Wronged king wanders among Central Asian mountains to discover her.
LUTHIEN: Deception and pursuit mingle for enchantress.
ARIEN: Radiant maiden is found where a backward age meets contemporaneity.
5. She is central to the current thing, we hear.
6. Muddled swamp track leads to another wronged ruler.
7. After a slight rearrangement she becomes fighting fit.

Oh wow! I thought of her but couldn't explain the rest of the word. How does it work? :confused:

Silly pun. The name is made of "Era" backwards ("backwards age") + "in" ("contemporaneity")- in the sense of something being "in" fashion etc.

Not half as silly as #5, though. #5 is just purely idiotic.:smokin:

Ah well not being a dedicated follower of fashion it is no wonder I struggled to get that. Stabbing again in the mirk - Gollum for 1. Again can't fully get there but heating alcohol could be mull

No, not Gollum.

Midfad! :D

Oh! Tar Miriel for 6!

Took me log enough. I had both mire and trail on my synonym list - and at one point discarded the other Miriel. This just goes to show how rusty my Tolkien got. The only reason it came to me now is I had a thought that all the clues involve females, and worked backwards by looking for female rulers.

The samr technique is not as fruitful for the unpleasant character, though. Maybe I'm wrong about the females, but it seems likely and might help Mith (and Pervinca and others?) guess the rest.

It is indeed Tar-Miriel.:)

1. Heating alcohol confuses unpleasant character.
2. Wronged king wanders among Central Asian mountains to discover her.
LUTHIEN: Deception and pursuit mingle for enchantress.
ARIEN: Radiant maiden is found where a backward age meets contemporaneity.
5. She is central to the current thing, we hear.
TAR-MIRIEL: Muddled swamp track leads to another wronged ruler.
7. After a slight rearrangement she becomes fighting fit.

Oh I thought of mire and so Miriel but couldn't make it work since didn't occur to use her style.

I can almost make Nimrodel work for 5, as an anagram of sound-like mode and inner.

Not Nimrodel. This one is really, really stupid. Not the answer. The method.:rolleyes:

And it's not an anagram.

Am tempted to say Altariel for 2 (Altai mountains), but can't get a wronged king, unless taking the X from Rex and replacing it with an L counts.

If you take the other variation, Alatariel, then King Lear fits with the extra A.

Hmmn... I'm not sure which of you to award that one to- perhaps both?:smokin:

1. Heating alcohol confuses unpleasant character.
ALATARIEL: Wronged king wanders among Central Asian mountains to discover her.
LUTHIEN: Deception and pursuit mingle for enchantress.
ARIEN: Radiant maiden is found where a backward age meets contemporaneity.
5. She is central to the current thing, we hear.
TAR-MIRIEL: Muddled swamp track leads to another wronged ruler.
7. After a slight rearrangement she becomes fighting fit.

An Entwife is central to an Ent, and Ent can be found in the centre of 'current thing.' And she's central to there ever being any Entings again ('ent-thing').

No, that would be clever. This is stupid, remember?

1. Miruvor for the heating alcohol as it warms you up, and the unpleasant character for the cryptic bits? ;) (The problem being that 'git' does not appear anywhere in 'miruvor,' confused or otherwise).

2. Uinen for 5 - but I know it's wrong. It's part of Bruinen, which has a current (perhaps), but you said it wasn't an anagram ... but I think she and Osse were close to Ulmo and hence to currents.

I think it's 'current' as in 'Now,' but I can't think of any 'Now' sounds except the Naugrim, who didn't have many women ....

'Indis' - central - 'in' - 'dis' (colloquial pronunciation of 'this') ...?

I was always very willing to give clues. People simply weren't replying to the thread; I thought you'd all grown tired of it or something.

Told you it was stupid!:smokin:

1. Heating alcohol confuses unpleasant character.
ALATARIEL: Wronged king wanders among Central Asian mountains to discover her.
LUTHIEN: Deception and pursuit mingle for enchantress.
ARIEN: Radiant maiden is found where a backward age meets contemporaneity.
INDIS: She is central to the current thing, we hear.
TAR-MIRIEL: Muddled swamp track leads to another wronged ruler.
7. After a slight rearrangement she becomes fighting fit.

Oh dear! That was in no way meant as a crack at you, but I see how it could be taken that way! I am sorry.:o

Nah, Pervinca did all the work.

I think it's just at some point you stop getting new ideas at all, and things slow down. And if that coincides with a general quiet then they die down. :(

I'm sorry too, for not putting a wink in.

I think at times people were simply too busy to guess clues. ;)

EDIT: Indis was actually RIGHT?

:d

Maeglin is an anagram of 'lame gin.' But 'lame' isn't really 'confused.' I wonder if we need 'mull,' though - perhaps it can be any alcohol that warms you up ... rum - but I tried rum first and Rumil isn't unpleasant, as far as I know. ;)

It's "the act of heating alcohol", not "a heating alcohol".

1. Heating alcohol confuses unpleasant character.

GOLFIMBUL is the only 'villain' name I can find that contains the word 'mull.' I thought it contained 'foil,' to, for 'confuses,' but the two l's are already used. Otherwise I'd have said mull + foil + b (a character/letter). There is 'fob,' but it leaves two characters/letters, not one.

The only other word I know for heating alcohol is 'burn,' but only as used by Sir Toby Belch: 'Come, let's burn some sack; 'tis too late to go to bed now.'

You need a word for heating liquid. The alcohol part is separate.

Lobelia, from 'boil ale?'

Which I guess makes it Lalaith ... and maybe Haleth (hale = fighting fit).

Edit: Oh! 'Health.'

Wow. That was sudden. :confused:

Yay! :D

I've been looking through female villainous creatures for the unpleasant character. Didn't think of Lobelia at all, though she fits the description much better!

PS: Pervinca, your password must have taken that long because you weren't around to hammer down the critical clues. ;)

I thought of Lobelia quite early on, but I thought we needed 'mull' in the answer, so was stumped for a long time.

Perhaps I should have held back and just volunteered one clue at a time. :( I thought the 'fighting fit' clue was Nerwen, actually - a near-anagram of 'renew' - because Galadriel is so strong.

No, that was brilliant! And posting is always better than holding back.

I somehow reserved all Galadriel-related names for the Radiant Maiden, and when none of them fit I discarded her completely until you brought up Altariel for the other clue. I was on the verge of guessing Nerwen for that one because 'new' can kinda be related to contemporaneity, but it didn't make enough sense (and no wonder, cause it's completely off).

I was very impressed by your solving of 'Luthien' and the one with 'trail' in it. I would not have got either of those.

Thanks! :o I got both by working back from the straight clue though. Guess I'm not that good at the cryptic part, or very rusty. :D

I got very frustrated with a new book of cryptic crosswords I was trying out before I went to sleep last night. I love cryptic clues, but I am not very good at finishing cryptic crosswords. But then they often don't cater for every single part of the clue ... either that or I simply AM very bad at them. :p

Please make a downward comparison :) I'm MUCH worse at them, so a post for your self esteem ahahhahah as that's about how competent I am at this very strange but fun thread. It's not that I'm stupid, and it's okay to be dumb (dumb means 'pre-aural' and is where the emotion, awe, traces to, so as we say 'it's only a fool who's never been a fool'.

I will try, again, to see if I can make myself a useful citizen on this thread and learn how to be an interesting gamer.

Hope you are well, Pervinca, and feel free to indulge my masochistic side, by humiliating me (hahaha by simply agreeing with my idiocy).

Hope you have been well.

Iv