Gandalf....fortune teller??

[IxnaY AintsaY]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I don't see any reason to doubt that over those 17 innocent years Frodo would have used the Ring in the same way Bilbo had; after all, he was in on the secret, and there was no suggestion made to him before that pivotal April that the Ring was anything other than a useful gadget for avoiding annoying relatives and the like.

I think I agree with you, but if we're looking for 'any reason to doubt', Gandalf does say this in SotP:

‘Of course, my dear Frodo, it was dangerous for you; and that has troubled me deeply. But there was so much at stake that I had to take some risk – though even when I was far away there has never been a day when the Shire has not been guarded by watchful eyes. As long as you never used it, I did not think that the Ring would have any lasting effect on you, not for evil, not at any rate for a very long time. And you must remember that nine years ago, when I last saw you, I still knew little for certain.’

There's more than one way to read that, of course, including that Gandalf was being a little imprecise.

Either way, it seems like a (very slight) authorial lapse to me, that Tolkien didn't either make it more clear that Frodo had used the Ring before Bombadil's house; or alternately that that was the very first time he'd ever used it. (Though I find the latter much less likely.)

It's also possible that the question wasn't completely settled in Tolkien's mind, given the changes in the nature of the Ring and the story between his first drafts and the published work.