24

Gollum is focused on his new ring. There is magic inside, he can feel it. A beautiful black ring with some golden symbols. He wants to know the power of this jewel but he can't wait to go back home to use an elvish dictionary.

Can you help him find out ?

enter image description here

HINT :

Elvish language

Fabich
  • 7,165
  • 2
  • 35
  • 59

1 Answers1

25

The power of the ring is ...

Faux Elvish inscriptions overlaid

The word can be seen in capital Latin letters when one rotates one of the partial inscriptions by 180° around the "finger" axis of the ring and overlays the two parts. The red parts come from the inscription on the inside of the ring and the black parts are the inscription on the outside of the ring.

The reference to the Elvish script is ...

... a red herring.

M Oehm
  • 60,621
  • 3
  • 208
  • 271
  • 4
    You say the hint was a red herring. So are hints that aren't hints allowed? I guess they would be, just curious if it was ever brought up on meta. – Insane May 25 '16 at 09:42
  • 3
    Probably it is not red herring, but refers to Boustrophedon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon – kamenf May 25 '16 at 10:04
  • 2
    Well, I thought it was a red herring; maybe I'm wrong. I imagined the ring as being made from two concentric transparent halves which were then rotated to line up. The mirrored part on the inside would then been seen as unmirrored when seen from outside. – M Oehm May 25 '16 at 10:11
  • Wait, so this ring has the power of the previous one without the evil (basically)? – SMS von der Tann May 25 '16 at 12:45
  • The leap from Tolkein's elvish language to Boustrophedon is pretty outrageous, per the linked Wiki page: "It has been described as a script that looks like a "mixture of Hebrew, Greek, and Pitman's shorthand."[3] Unfortunately, there are no clues as to what writing systems influenced Tolkien's scripts. This also might mean that his invented scripts found their origins from his mind alone." - the Wiki page proffered as a hint, at least, does nothing to direct the reader in that vein. – Jason May 25 '16 at 16:52
  • ... that's not to say I perforce object to a red herring, I'm just saying I don't think it can be argued that it is, in fact, a red herring. – Jason May 25 '16 at 16:55
  • It was a misleading hint. I was trying to make solvers think about something more complicated than just common english ;) – Fabich May 26 '16 at 08:51
  • @Lordofdark: Well, you succeeded. My first thought was to try overlaying the 2 inscriptions. But before giving it a shot, I read the hint, and - believing it to be true - did not make any further attempt at the puzzle. So I guess Insane has a point there. But a nice puzzle, nevertheless. – KeyboardWielder May 27 '16 at 18:52