These question rounds, of 8-10 questions each, are all Tolkien's life and his constructed languages. Most are from past Varsity quizzes and are thus arranged by the year they were asked.
This section contains 7 rounds, with a total of 60 questions.
2015
1. In what year did Edith Tolkien die?
2. What was Tolkien’s brother’s name?
3. What is Rivendell in Westron?
4. And, also in Westron, what’s Merry Brandybuck’s name?
5. What town was Tolkien born in?
6. In what year was Tolkien appointed Merton Professor of English Language and Literature?
7. What does the following mean, and what language is it? “Dar fys ma vel gom co palt 'hoc pys go iskili far maino woc?”
8. What does the following mean, and what language is it? “Narîka 'nBâri 'nAdûn yanâkhim.”
9. Who was Edith engaged to before Tolkien?
10. In what year did the Tolkiens move to Headington?
2014
1. In what year did Tolkien enter King Edward's school?
2. What is Frodo's name in Westron?
3. What was Edith Tolkien's maiden name?
4. How would you read the runes on Balin's tomb (the Khuzdul part)?
5. Which place did Tolkien say was “almost free of the cursed disease of the internal combustion engine of which all the world is dying”?
6. Which language did Tolkien claim “nearly ruined my Hon. Mods”?
7. What would “Orofarne, lassemista, carnimirie' be in English?
8. What was Tolkien's father's name?
9. On what day of the week were Tolkien and Edith married?
10. Who looked “exactly like one of my dwarves, only I don't think he smokes”?
2013
1. Which Middle-Earth language does Tolkien use Old English to represent?
2. What does Henneth Annûn mean?
3. What language did Tolkien compare to “a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before”?
4. In Nevbosh, what does “woc” mean?
5. Complete the verse: The Lord of the Rings/is one of those things:
6. What is the Khuzdul name of Caradhras?
7. What is Sam Gamgee’s name in Westron?
8. To what office was Tolkien appointed in the Summer of 1920?
2011
1. What word did Tolkien give to a cattle-breeder as the Elvish word for ‘bull’?
2. What is the subject of Tolkien’s Gothic poem Bagme Bloma?
3. What is the meaning of the name ‘Tar-Elestirnë’?
4. What is the meaning of the name ‘Limlint’?
5. What is iglishmêk?
6. What is meant by “Dog nightingale woodpecker forty”?
7. What academic work which Tolkien began in 1935 was not completed until 1962?
8. Where did Tolkien consider to be “uninhabitable – unsleepable-in – unworkable-in”?
2009
1. What is the Quenya word for “swan”?
2. Translate into English: Aurë Entúluva
3. Which institution bought the manuscripts of the Lord of the Rings in 1957?
4. Within the legendarium, who first invented letters?
5. In which year was Tolkien awarded a CBE?
6. In what year was The Hobbit first published?
7. How did Tolkien render the Hobbitish name Zaragamba?
8. What was the full title of Tolkien’s academic post, just before he retired?
2007
1. Which name is translated as ‘the Silver Hand’?
2. According to the Etymologies, the name of which woman, who gave birth to a great man, means ‘crown+gift’?
3. Which US publisher released an unauthorised paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings?
4. What was the name of Tolkien’s guardian after his mother died?
5. Translate Lampmakers’ Street into Sindarin.
6. What did the Drúedain call the Orcs?
7. What was the title of the collection of verses by members of the Leeds University English School Association to which Tolkien contributed?
8. What was the Inklings’ nickname for R E Havard?
2005
1. Name the street of Tolkien’s birth in Bloemfontein.
2. What did Tolkien and Christopher Wiseman privately call themselves?
3. Which of the Inklings interrupted a reading of The Lord of the Rings with the words “Not another fucking elf!”?
4. Tolkien was once given a goblet which he never drank from. Instead, he used it as an ashtray. Why?
5. In The Lord of the Rings, the name Sangahyando is given to a man. But earlier Tolkien gave the name to something rather different. What was it?
6. What is the name of the palatal series in Tengwar?
7. According to The Lord of the Rings, what is the literal meaning of Hithlain?
8. What does “Vanda sina termaruva Elenna·nóreo alcar enyalien” mean?