| Thanks for the comments and corrections everyone. This quiz was a lot of work to make, but it was also a lot of fun. I'm glad people are enjoying it.
Regarding the quoted dialog...I wrestled with that for a long time. Initially, I was going to include every character that was directly quoted by another character (which would then include Deagol, Radagast, and others, like Isildur and Sauron). But the problem was that there was a gray area for some characters...there were some characters that weren't directly quoted, but had what they said paraphrased very closely. There was also the issue of characters like Saruman and Smeagol who are quoted early in the story and then have actual dialog later...and I couldn't decide if their chapter of first appearance should be when they are quoted or when they actually appear and speak. In the end, to eliminate ambiguity, I decided to treat the books as if they were a a play or a movie, and only count characters that actually appeared "on stage" with lines. It made inclusion/exclusion details simpler. I also limited it only to the main text...no appendices or prologue.
Regarding the Barrow Wight...I made the decision early on in the quizmaking process that I would only include characters that were uniquely identified. That is, only characters with a name or a uniquely identifying title (i.e. "Eomer", "The Witch King", or "The Warden of the House of Healing" are included because they refer to a specific person, but "one of the riders" or "an orc" are not, because they are not referring to a unique person). We only ever actually see one Barrow Wight...but the implication is that there are many, or at least several of them ("Barrow Wights", in the plural, I believe is used from time to time). Since our Wight never has any further specific identification, I ultimately decided to omit him.
If I had "Tom Cotton" give you both characters, that would be too easy. :-) |
LOTR: Races
LOTR: Actors
The Lord of the Rings Chapters
