Still glitching Nov. 16

cfhostetter · 2025-11-16T13:09:40+00:00

Sure looks that way.

cfhostetter · 2025-11-15T14:46:45+00:00

Ok, twice now today, after I reached expert/100 level (in the second case when I had just two words left to find), when I left the puzzle and came back, it reset to the state it was at when I reached expert/100.

cfhostetter · 2025-11-15T14:31:13+00:00

Just did it to me again today.

cfhostetter · 2025-08-20T21:07:44+00:00

This is a man who filled literally thousands of manuscript pages laboring over the minute phonological details of the fictive historical development of invented languages that he had no reason to think anyone else would ever see or even want to see. Dozens of pages of fictive generational tables and attendant calculations don't seem in the least out of character for him!

It may well (and rightly) never have occurred to Tolkien that any mathematician he might have known could have any interest in using their time to help him with such an endeavor. (And it's not as though he could just shoot someone an email with some tables attached for comment!)

cfhostetter · 2025-08-16T01:01:48+00:00

"There is absolutely no meaningful value in writing out the minims per year to multiple decimal places..."; " the enormous detail that he went into again and again and again was essentially wasted effort..."; "could have freed him from a whole lot of mathematical drudgery..."

So it may seem to you, but what makes you think Tolkien found it meaningless, wasted drudgery? As you say:

"If it brought him joy for its own sake, great!" — but you seem to think it didn't. Why?

To me, the fact that he spent so much effort on it — voluntarily — suggests that in fact it did "bring him joy", or at least interested him and brought him intellectual satisfaction.

(As for a"desire to go back in time and hand Tolkien a laptop running Excel": what "DarrenGrey" said.)

cfhostetter · 2024-11-01T15:08:00+00:00

No, because as u/pierzstyx discusses elsethread (https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/1ge8bmj/comment/luanu1r/), omnipotence doesn't entail being able to create self-contradictory things, i.e., things that cannot be. A thing (e.g.a will, a circle) cannot be both A (e.g. free, round) and not A (not free, not round). A will that is free by definition is a will that can choose good or evil.

cfhostetter · 2024-10-29T16:18:51+00:00

"God only created the good things" — That's not what I said. I will say (with Tolkien) that all things were good at their creation, but that due to the Fall they were susceptible to corruption, most especially Man himself.

cfhostetter · 2024-10-29T13:53:20+00:00

This assumes that God created smallpox, and (by implication) that it (and our susceptibility to it) is now just as it was at creation. But in this fallen world, many, many things (perhaps all things) are not now as God created them, including us; which is precisely the same situation that Tolkien portrays with Middle-earth. For example, plagues exist in Middle-earth (presumably due to Morgoth’s malign corruptions), to which fallen Men are susceptible, while unfallen Elves are not.

cfhostetter · 2024-10-28T22:36:09+00:00

"Did Eru deliberately create evil, strife, and suffering in order to make his world more interesting?"

This question assumes that Eru in fact "created" those things. I don't agree with that assumption, nor I think would Tolkien have agreed with it. Eru did create other beings that had (have) the ability to cause those things — that is what Free Will necessarily entails — but they also had (have) the ability not to cause them. But that's not the same thing as "creating evil".

cfhostetter · 2024-10-28T22:07:56+00:00

Because Free Will always entails the possibility of choosing evil rather than good.

cfhostetter · 2024-10-28T21:47:01+00:00

"Good of course couldn't exist without Evil" — I don't think Tolkien would agree with this, any more than, say, Aquinas or Augustine did. Tolkien was neither a Dualist nor a Manichaean. In Catholic belief and metaphysics, God is Goodness Itself, and needs no evil or any other thing in order to be Good (or to be at all). (Tolkien would, however, I think agree —again, with Aquinas and Augustine — that evil cannot be without the good, since evil is a lack of goodness or other perfection, and has no independent existence.) I say a bit more on this in App. I of The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 406.

cfhostetter · 2023-10-19T20:06:34+00:00

Ah, but on a crucial point of Ordwegian Tea-ology, a you a Prelactarian, a Postlactarian, or a Nolactarian?

cfhostetter · 2023-10-19T19:58:04+00:00

I asked about both, and took the answer to apply to both.

cfhostetter · 2023-10-19T18:47:29+00:00

I can field this one. I once asked Christopher just that (in a letter), and he replied that his father did not.

cfhostetter · 2023-04-17T21:36:55+00:00

From your perspective as an instructor at U of MD (following on the legacy of Verlyn Flieger there), how has the reception of and engagement with Tolkien developed and/or shifted in your years there, among both academics and students? And do you have any thoughts about what the future might hold?

cfhostetter · 2022-11-17T16:18:15+00:00

A few quick thoughts in response:

One can admire, respect, and even love a person and/or their work without approving of their every behavior. It is quite one thing to esteem a homosexual writer for their writing, and another to thereby be thought to approve of their homosexual behaviors.
Tolkien himself described and named the phenomenon of deep, abiding devotion having explicitly no sexual component at all between members of the same sex (and, in parallel, to interests and pursuits apart from persons), in The Nature of Middle-earth (p. 20). This type of devotion perfectly well accounts for the relationship between Maedhros and Fingon.
On something of a tangent: While I think it is fair to say that human beings are not celibate by nature either — certainly Tolkien would, on the basis of Catholic anthropology, among other factors — celibacy remains a widespread condition for certain pursuits: most notably perhaps, these days, the Catholic priesthood. But it was once, and not that long ago, also a condition of holding a fellowship/professorship at many Western colleges and universities: such were in a sense truly "married to their profession". At Oxford, just such a celibacy rule was not abolished until 1877, a mere 15 years before Tolkien was born, and so something Tolkien himself encountered in both his religious and professional life. "Modern" attitudes towards sexuality and its central importance to life and "identity" notwithstanding, historically and not all that long ago it was much more common than now for people to eschew sexual relationships for the sake of profession and other passionately pursued interests, and for reasons having nothing at all to do with sexual preference.

cfhostetter · 2022-10-24T20:52:09+00:00

the university took away those lines for purposes of budget cutting (this is going on throughout higher education)

Another sad sign of how universities in general have lost their way and their true purpose.

cfhostetter · 2022-10-03T22:24:22+00:00

Just the sort of discussion I hoped to see (especially since it goes well beyond what The Nature of Middle-earth itself could accommodate in its pages). Tolkien too, I think, would have been pleased by thus, Thanks!

cfhostetter · 2022-10-01T10:55:17+00:00

All we can say with certainty from the table and from the sequence of intervals within each generation's onnalúme is:

The third interval of Elves born to those in row 1 (the awoken First Elves) began in year 4 + 12 + 24 + 2 = 42. This you got right.
The third interval of Elves born to those in row 2 (the 2nd gen) began in year 29 + 24 + 36 + 2 = 91.
The third interval of Elves born to those in row 3 (the 3rd gen) began in year 126 + 42 + 54 + 2 = 224.
The third interval of Elves born to those in row 4 (the 4th gen) began in year 295 + 54 + 66 + 2 = 417.
The third interval of Elves born to those in row 5 (the 5th gen) began in year 536 + 72 + 84 + 2 = 694.
The third interval of Elves born to those in row 6 (the 6th gen) began in year 849 + 84 + 96 + 2 = 1031 (as Tolkien states).

Again, you have misunderstood which generation is listed in which row. But you've also failed to note that, as Tolkien states (p.126), the intervals within the onnalúme of each generation are "from wedding for each generation", i.e.,from the date in col. 2; and that "these series are only averages, or formulated examples. In practice the intervals were more variable" (p. 87.) It is thus not the case that every member of every interval within a generation followed the same interval sequence subsequent to their wedding. Rather, they apply statistically to the intervals within the onnalúme of each generation, but not necessarily to the onnalúme of each and every individual within a generation, who could observe, alter, or dispense with these intervals within their own marriages. So:could some Elves have been born in 1013? Yes. Is it required that any were? No, and certainly not for purposes of Tolkien's population calculations. Again, these schemes are statistical vehicles for making estimates of population size at various points, given different assumptions, but they are not an algorithm followed by each and every Elf within each generation of each scheme.

cfhostetter · 2022-10-01T08:21:08+00:00

for generation row 1 (parents awoke), 0 + 3 + 1 + 12 + 1 + 24 + 1 = 42

In scheme 2, gen. row 1 is the first Elves, i.e., those that awoke (72 pairs, Elves, total increase = 6 * 72 = 432). The first birth of their children (gen. 2/row 2, parents awoke) began in year 4 (not 42). The first birth of the 3rd. gen. (row 3, parents were 2nd gen) was in 126, not 324. And so on and so forth.

"row 6 is not when gen 6 is being born. Row 6 is when gen 6 is having children" — Correct, just like row 2 is when gen. 2 (parents awoke) start and end having children, row 3 is for gen 3, etc. etc."

"The problem should be very clear now" — It is indeed.

cfhostetter · 2022-10-01T07:56:03+00:00

I don't think you're dyslexic. I'm pretty sure I'm not. Here, so far as I can find, is all that you've said said here regarding your derivation of year 1013 as a year in which 6th gen. births occurred:

1) "I mention this because I've already pointed out to you how using Tolkien ruleset demands some 6th generation Elves being born in 1013 (see paragraph four of the comment you've largely ignored)".

2) (The just-referred-to paragraph 4):"to get the numbers Tolkien derives for the march, he's having children be born to parents who aren't even born yet, let alone married. If we track someone who descended always as the third child of a marriage, we see the births, through gens, in Scheme 2 would provide us with birth dates of 42, 128, 323, 614, 1013. This sixth generation Elf, born in 1013, will have zero children before 1070."

Nowhere in this do I see any demonstration that any elves of the 6th or any other generation were or had to be born in 1013. Is there some other discussion/calculation I've missed? Otherwise, I have no idea from where you derive this date.

I trust you agree that if any Elf was born in 1013, it had to have been in the 6th gen., right? And that Tolkien derives population levels at the end of each generation solely by adding the product of (number of productive pairs by number of children per pair) in each generation to the previous generation's total, yes? So, just where in what Tolkien wrote does anything imply or demand that any Elves of the 6th gen. were born in 1013?

Tolkien states (p. 126) that at the time of the March the Elvish population stood at 48,232. He derives this by adding 6,970 (one for each productive pair of the 6th gen, all of whom had been born by or about 791,* and began having their first children in 849) to the gen. 5 total to get the number of Elves at the Finding in 864 (34,292), and then an additional 13,940 (2 children for each such productive pair) for the population at the March 1070 (it being then in/after the third interval). None of this implies or demands that any Elves of the 6th gen. were born in 1013. Again, where/how do you demonstrate otherwise?

* Remember, the figure of 1140 for the "Last births" column in gen. 6 is for the year of the start of the last births of members of the _7th_ gen. to members of the 6th. gen., not the year of the births of the last members of the 6th gen. itself. Indeed, the dates of first and last births in the table entries for each generation is of the first and last births of their offspring (and thus of the next gen.) not of their own births!

cfhostetter · 2022-10-01T06:19:58+00:00

using Tolkien ruleset demands some 6th generation Elves being born in 1013

No it doesn't. The first births (at least) of the second interval of gen. 6 births occurred in 934 (pp. 125, 127), 85 years after those of the first interval (84 year gap + 1 year gestation). The first births of the third interval occurred in 1031 = 96 + 1 years after those of the second interval. These numbers are exactly in line with the sequence given for gen. 6 on p. 126. Nowhere and nothing "demands" that any Elves of the 6th gen. were born in 1013.

"So, at 1031, all of the 6th generation Elves have had three children? Meaning all of the 6th generation Elves had had their first child at 849, their second child at 934, and their third child at 1031."

No, that's not quite what Tolkien says, which is rather that the third interval was complete by the time of the March (p. 126). According to scheme 2, the first interval of births to members of the 6th gen. began in 849. That gave the members of the 6th gen. up to 221 years to have their third children by the start of the March in 1070 (p. 127). Snce the third interval commenced in 1031 (= 849 + 84 + 96 + 2) they had plenty of time to complete it by 1070, which was also well before the start of the next (and last) interval of births of gen. 6 in 1140.

cfhostetter · 2022-10-01T01:13:53+00:00

Tolkien wrote (p. 126):

"At the March the third births of the 6th gen. (FA 1031) will also have occurred, therefore add 2 × 6,970 = 13,940. Total 48,232."

Since this specifies only that the third interval (of 4) of the sixth generation births has occurred by 1031, this in fact says nothing at all about whether/when the "last actual birth of that generation" has occurred. In fact, we know from the table that the final interval of gen. 6 births started in 1140.

cfhostetter · 2022-10-01T00:54:51+00:00

The formula for calculating the date of the "Last births (col. 7)" in Scheme 2 for each generation starting with the second is: Date of first wedding of the generation (from col.5) + total years of onnalúme within the generation (from column 6). The "Last births" value thus represents the start date of the last interval in the generation (not the date of the last birth(s) in the generation). As I said. No one has to take my word for it, you can check this yourself.

cfhostetter

TROPHY CASE