Books Humor

Tolkien trivia question and answer #43

2 commentsDecember 4, 20061 min read

Friday’s trivia question was “Who were the Dumbledors?” I thought this might trip up some of you, but “dfoles” got it. The answer is “Insects in Bilbo’s poem ‘Errantry.’”

Today’s question is one of the riddles in Bilbo and Gollum’s riddle game in “The Hobbit”. The riddle is “Thirty white horses on a red hill, first they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still.” Answer tomorrow.

The original blog post on this trivia feature is here.

Technorati Tags:fun, Tolkien, trivia

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2 comments

Jon Kaltenbach says:

December 4, 2006 at 9:13 pm

The answer is chestnuts, if I’m not mistaken.
Melanie Bettinelli says:

December 5, 2006 at 1:43 pm

The online etymology dictionary says:

Slang sense of “venerable joke or story” is from 1886, probably from a joke (first recorded 1888) based on an oft-repeated story in which a chestnut tree figures. The key part of the 1888 citation is:

“When suddenly from the thick boughs of a cork-tree—”
“A chestnut, Captain; a chestnut.”
“Bah! booby, I say a cork-tree!”
“A chestnut,” reiterates Pablo. “I should know as well as you, having heard you tell the tale these twenty-seven times.”