I think William will provide the missing bits and you will be able to solve them together. I provided one or two missing links so you could solve a couple of his last clues, if you remember. RGN which he clarified as RN, and Hagar, Sarah's handmaid.

Try relaxing and enjoying the game. And taking a break and seeing if the next day you can think of a different perspective on a clue. Instead of trying to batter all the clues to death at once if you can't find the answers at once.

Okay, but don't expect everyone to chime in. Also, remember this:

MENELDUR: Repair and reign through turmoil, he does. Move along one.
2. Back number thirteen. Initially lose trust, but replace with direction. See her!
3. She reforms one long-serving prisoner.
4. A dwarf sickens, but is restored by her.
5. No ease of the womb, we hear. At sixes and sevens, he is.
6. He arranged a note of complaint.
7. Was she heard to mock or gloat at the time?

Please prove me wrong, Huinesoron.....

ETA: And.....He's gone again. You see what I mean? T.T

Yes, I know the ten day rule. We're currently on about half a day! And where I live, and I think Huey too, it is now bedtime. Good night!

And I suppose that you think that he and G55 would magically pop up just to try to solve this despite being absent for more than a week? :c

With you bumping threads up each time they've been silent for more than a few hours, we won't run into that problem.

Why don't you speak for yourself and don't decide for others. Realize too that no one is obligated to post. If you're bored, you could start making a list of 50 realistic reasons why people don't post every hour of the day. Hint: "they just want to make the password solving more difficult for you" is not one of them.

I couldn't come up with anything except for Jean Valjean for the prisoner, but he has too many J's for Tolkien names and from what I can remember there are no Janes in any of the family trees.

A google search brought me to Paul Geidel, who served the longest sentence in the States. This has more promising letters but I still don't get a clean acronym.

Not Valjean or Geidel, and indeed not any *specific* prisoner.

OK. A clue for Urwen.

I told you FAITH was right, but look again at that part of that clue. There is one vital word that you are overlooking.

You mean LOST. I included it in my Firiel guess as letter L. I mean, it says 'Initially lose trust', which implies that we need initials of Faith and Lost, ie. F and L.

There is a difference between not posting every hour of every day and not posting for more than a week, just sayin'. And if you're that busy, then you're not magically going to become unbusy. I apologize if me being realistic offends you this much.

o.O

In my case, not so much 'busy' as 'stressed and wrung-out'; I think I said that last time this came up. And yes, before you ask, it actually does take less mental energy to post a weird theory to Books than to puzzle out cryptic clues.

Also, I remember a very long period which mostly consisted of Pervinca and I bouncing passwords off each other; sometimes people don't engage with the same threads you do, and that's okay.

Alsø alsø wik, are you monitoring Downs activity to see who's around? O.o That sounds more like something you'd do to catch suspiciously quiet wolves in Werewolf.

---===---

Anyway: here I am, in much less than a year.

1/ MEneldur, as already guessed. A few possible themes here; Urwen has already passed through several.

2/ In a Tolkien context, thirteen immediately suggests 'thirteen dwarves'. The thirteenth arrival at Bilbo's house was Thorin himself, who goes back as Niroht. That... doesn't sound very coherent, honestly, and there's no anagram indicator in the clue (Pervinca tends to include those).

Alternately, my name being taken in vain suggests we might be looking elsewhere... how about elements? Element 13 is aluminium, or Al - and LA is a perfect way to start a Tolkien name.

And y'know, if you lose the initial of 'faith' (thanks, Urwen), you get AITH... slap those two together and stick an L for Left in the middle, and you hit LALAITH.

3/ looks like an anagram ('reforms'). I was about to start thinking of prisoners, but Pervinca says it's not a specific one... synonyms? 'Lifer' means a long-serving prisoner, and 'one' suggests we add an A... no, make that a Roman I, to get FIRIEL.

4/ Well, the movies tell me this must be TAURIEL. :p (Beleg of course healed Mim, but was male, so far as we know.)

5/ 'at sixes and sevens' makes me think of Don't Cry For Me, Argentina, but that's sung by a woman, so maybe not. Did you know there's precisely one instance of the phrase "ease of the womb" on Google? So... I'm guessing a synonym for 'no ease' (pain? hard?), and a soundalike for 'womb'. No idea about the latter part, unless it's pointing to a 2-letter character spelt out on letters 6 and 7 (in the clue, that would be EO, which is almost EOL, but I'm guessing not.)

6/ 'arranged' suggests an anagram, adding a note (A-G, as Urwen says) to a synonym for complaint. I'm no good at anagrams unless I have a theme to aim at.

7/ At the time? Er, when? :O Is the answer URWEN? ^_^ It would actually kind of fit - 'heard' indicates a soundalike, and it's a valid answer to 'at the time?'. Could also be 'her, when?'.

I'm pretty confident of my answers for 2 and 3, so what to Meneldur, Lalaith, and Firiel have in common? Well... taking Firiel to be Miriel (wife of Finwe), they all changed their names - and, oddly enough, Lalaith changed from Urwen. That would mean we'd need both Miriel and Irimon as answers in there somewhere, as well as one other pair, of which one half would be the password (none of these answers start with E).

A quick browse suggest that ELESSAR would fit for the password with those conditions. So we'd be looking at the following overall:

1. mEneldur
2. Lalaith
3. firiEl
4. unclear, as neither Miriel or Urwen has an S
5. some name of Aragorn; Strider seems plausible, but I can't fit it to the clue.
6. would have to be Irimon, but there's no A. Meneldur also has the name Elentirmo, but again... the only possibility would be tAr-meneldur, but that seems a bit repetitive.
7. uRwen would work.

How've I done?

hS

MENELDUR: Repair and reign through turmoil, he does. Move along one.
LALAITH: Back number thirteen. Initially lose trust, but replace with direction. See her!
FIRIEL: She reforms one long-serving prisoner.
4. A dwarf sickens, but is restored by her.
5. No ease of the womb, we hear. At sixes and sevens, he is.
6. He arranged a note of complaint.
7. Was she heard to mock or gloat at the time?

Exactly ... I thought a scientist might figure that it was 'atomic number 13.' As I said, I had forgotten my own thinking behind that clue, though, and had to stop for a minute or two and figure it out.

Urwen ... you were missing that it was the INITIAL letter of FAITH.

I cannot see any connection between Lalaith, Firiel and Meneldur, other than the one Huinesoron said....

Firiel and Lalaith were both called 'elven-fair'. And Meneldur's birth name, Irimon, means 'beautiful man'. Is the connection that all three of them were considered 'fair'?

The password could be Elf-Fair, then

4. Miriel (M for Mim + IL + I for Is + RE)

I did my research, and another common thing that Firiel, Meneldur and Lalaith share is that all of them had two siblings.

In this case the password could be ELFWINE, as in Elfwine the Fair, son of Eomer. That would put a W in the answer to #4, but I can't see a useful answer from that.

The characters actually surnamed 'the Fair' are Celegorm, Dior, Elanor, Hirluin, and Elfwine.

hS

Other known characters with two siblings


Feanor, Fingolfin, Finarfin
Aredhel, Turgon, Fingon (unless we count Argon)
Turin, Nienor
Ailinel, Almariel
Elwing, Elured, Elurin
Elwe, Olwe, Elmo

Something tells me you got the password, otherwise, Pervinca wouldn't be posting a reply for this long.

5. Huinesoron has applied 'we hear' to the wrong element.

No to Huey's theme and password, too.

...

People are different. Cryptic clues to me are fun things I can do between other things, but lit discussion takes time and headspace I don't have. (Unless someone mentions Frodo, of course. :D). But it's mostly First Age, which I learned to love in later years but still don't know as intimately as LOTR.

No. Pervinca is at WORK.

4. You are not looking for a name of a dwarf, but a 'kind of' synonym for dwarf.

Synonyms for 'dwarf': midget, bantam, Lilliputian, Tom Thumb, homunculus.

See above.

I did, and nothing comes to mind.

Is it one of these?

Synonyms for 'dwarf': midget, bantam, Lilliputian, Tom Thumb, homunculus.

Or one of these?

gnome, goblin, hobgoblin, troll, imp, elf, brownie, kelpie, leprechaun, fairy, pixie, sprite

4. Menegilda Goold (GNOME+ILL+GOADED)

Brilliant effort, but no.

Remember I said 'kind of' synonym. Think of something a dwarf *does.*

Miner?

M i n e r + i l l + r e n e w

Maybe Elfhild is the password, as opposed to the clue.

If you dig, and are ill...

... then you're DINA DIGGLE, great-great-grandmother of Frodo Baggins.

^_^

hS

There's only so many names starting with Elf-; I can't see any link between Elfhild and the others. Lalaith, maybe - they both died early. And Firiel = Miriel did the same, I guess...

... and I suppose Tar-Meneldur abdicated early, to clear the way for Aldarion. So maybe?

For #5, I think 'at sixes and sevens' is just an anagram indicator.

hS

Elfhelm also fits the letters, but again I have nothing theme-wise to support the answer.

If so, then it's D I G G E R, which doesn't fit w/your answer.

P.S: Try to solve the Musical Thread riddle as well, would u?

Maybe 'sickens' is just an anagram indicator too.

Except that it isn't.

4. Silmarien (MINER + AILS)