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True, but could Frodo have destroyed the Ring? I am sure Gollum was necessary.
I've been thinking more about the Riddle Game, which not only gives this chapter its title but also constitutes a major part of it. We know that it progresses from easy to difficult, but is the choice of riddles significant and is there some meaning to the order in which they're given? We have the answers: mountain, teeth, wind, sun on daisy, dark, egg, fish, fish/table/man/stool/cat, time. The abstract concepts (dark, time) come toward the end, but not back to back; there are two complex answers (sun/daisy and the legs riddle).
The last real riddle was about "time" - now, perhaps the fact that my fanfiction is about a Hobbit clockmaker makes me more aware of the connection between a hobbit and time than I would normally be, but it seems that Hobbits (who have few clocks and no watches) measure time by concrete signs - light and dark, hunger (we have Bilbo mentioning the feeling that it must be time for a meal), and so on. The abstract concept doesn't seem as important to them, which would account for Bilbo's trouble with the riddle.
But Gollum, who has lived 'beyond his time' and for whom time must pass slowly, all alone underground, with no light to differentiate and define his days, might have thought about it more.
Do you think this particular riddle has a deeper significance for the story? I'm still pondering...
One detail I noticed was the use of the word "chestnut" for an easy riddle. Now, I've read a lot, but this use of that word is one with which I'm hardly familiar. Its meaning is recognizable from the context, of course, but is it one you would normally know?
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth.. .'
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