Well. That’s a month gone.
On August 14 I put up a riddle and asked you to find a hobbit-made painting. Twenty-eight days, ten riddles and one very leaky boat later, the hunt is over, the draw is done, and I can finally stop being cryptic about everything.
(Two days later than announced, admittedly. It turns out I can build a ten-riddle treasure hunt but not a calendar.)
The message
Let’s start with the thing you’ve all been assembling since August. Ten fragments, one per riddle, scattered deliberately out of order so nobody could guess the ending halfway through:
“Every great home in Middle-earth began with a single empty hook. Thank you for ten years of building them with us. Here’s to the next ten!”
That’s it. That’s what the whole thing was for.
The winners
Twenty winners were drawn completely at random from every correct entry (100!), across the five prize tiers:
| Prize | Winners | |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | 400 Homesteading Coins + a Kingdoms of Harad: Ultimate Fan Bundle expansion code | 1 |
| Tier 2 | 400 Homesteading Coins | 1 |
| Tier 3 | 1,000 LOTRO Points | 3 |
| Tier 4 | 500 LOTRO Points | 5 |
| Tier 5 | 100 LOTRO Points | 10 |
The draw was run through RandomPicker, one entry per person, no weighting, no favourites. Finishing on day one and finishing on the last afternoon were worth exactly the same, which was the entire point.
Every winner is being contacted directly, so there’s nothing you need to do. If you took part, keep an eye on your inbox over the next 24h.
You may also notice there’s no list of names here. That would be because the entry form asked for an email address and nothing else. No character name, no server, nothing I could reasonably put on a page. Ten years of running contests, and I built myself a winners list I can’t publish. I’ll be fixing that one for the next Riddle Contest…
And a word of genuine thanks to the LOTRO team, who put up a prize pool considerably more generous than anything a one-person fan-site could have managed alone.
The answers
Now that it’s over, here’s the whole thing laid out. If you got stuck on one of these, you were probably not alone.
| # | The riddle | Answer | Fragment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | “A hobbit-made painting of a green dragon” | Dragon Painting | in Middle-earth |
| 2 | How many decorations in the fire pit category | 10 | of building them |
| 3 | Two homesteads unveiled in August 2020 | Rohan | a single |
| 4 | The hobbit working up his courage in Bindbole Wood | Ardo | Thank you |
| 5 | Three letters on my kinship house floor | Yao | empty hook |
| 6 | The very determined fellow with a hole in his boat | Wilibald Took | Every great home |
| 7 | The small bright thing that sings, gone since 2008 | Colourful Songbird | with us |
| 8 | The one who only comes out after dark | Dark Runner | began with |
| 9 | A very bad morning outside Bree’s North Gate | Hob | for ten years |
| 10 | Scenario’s word, live on stream | Massive Sleeping Deep-Claw or Deep-Claw | Here’s to the next ten! |
Thank you
To everyone who played, whether you finished all ten or gave up somewhere around the leaky boat: thank you.
To Scenario, for closing the whole thing out live on stream, and to the LOTRO team for backing yet another one of my ideas without asking too many questions.
And to all of you, for ten years of this site. I’m still not entirely sure how that happened.
One more thing
For those of you who enjoyed this: LOTRO turns 20 next April.
Twenty years. Which feels like the sort of occasion that deserves something, and I have a few ideas already. Nothing is promised, nothing is planned, and I’ve learned not to announce things until I’ve checked a calendar at least twice.
But if you liked chasing hobbits around the Shire for a month, keep April free. 💚
See you in the next one.
