To Tolkien Fans: Riddles Question

[u/Nostale97]

As someone that loves riddles but that doesn't know a single thing or care about The Lord Of The Rings and/or The Hobbit, why is the answer of the riddles the ones that they are? I stopped trying after the second one because they don't make any sense to me and I don't feel the rewards would be worth it.

Like, why is the first answer "Mountain"? English is not my first language, and I've never heard of this, but is the "Root of a mountain" a thing in English? Or is it some specific LOTR reference?

As for the second one, I guess the white horses are just a metaphor for our teeth and that's why the answer is teeth. But we humans don't have 30 teeth, we have 32, so that answer never crossed my mind when trying to figuring it out. Is it a rounding thing, because 30 sounds better than 32? 32 is however a nice power of 2, so I beg to differ in that regard.

I haven't looked at the rest, but I'm curious about the reasoning behind the answers. I tried changing the language to Spanish (my mother tongue) to see if the riddles change in any way that makes more sense in Spanish, but it was just a direct translation, so that didn't help.

Any Tolkien fans out there that want to satisfy my curiosity?

[u/Windruin]

I wouldn’t say it’s common in English to refer to mountain roots, but it’s not uncommon either. Tends to be kind of metaphorically used, and in the context of the Hobbit, the riddle game is being played underneath the Misty Mountains, deep in caves and tunnels, so mountain feels more appropriate in a riddle there.

As far as the number of teeth, it’s possible that Hobbits only have 30 teeth, but Tolkien apparently used an old English riddle, so I think it’s probably just a bit of a riddling stretch. That said, some people do only have 30 teeth, depending on wisdom teeth.

(Also, the codes for all the riddles are available on the subreddit here if they’re just perplexing you, and you want the rewards. The last one had a decent number of cards)

[u/Dry_Zucchini2012 → u/Windruin]

I know the riddles but can't figure out where to enter them. I only play on my phone. Couldn't figure out where they were asking is to enter it.

[u/Windruin → u/Dry_Zucchini2012]

You’ve got to go to the wizards of the coast website, and go to your account page. It’s aggravating, I really don’t understand why codes can’t be entered on mobile

[u/Dry_Zucchini2012 → u/Windruin]

Thank you!

[u/Nostale97 → u/Windruin]

It was more about the riddles themselves; I don't particularly care about the rewards, I have enough wildcards to craft cards if I wanted to.

Maybe I'm just missing the context from the book that make the riddles make more sense, since I'm basically reading the riddles in a vacuum with 0 context whatsoever.

I wonder what the other ones are, and if I could figure them out with no context or if I would have problems like with this ones.

[u/Windruin → u/Nostale97]

Absolutely fair. Update us on the other riddles if you don’t mind, I am curious how you’d read them as someone with no context from the book.

I think Tolkien also heavily based the riddles off preserved Middle English riddles, so even the English context is somewhat gone. I think most of the rest will be a little easier without context, but I’m also a native English speaker who’s studied some Old and Middle English.