I came here for the book pedantry and you were fast and detailed but super nice about it, so my negative online instincs are only partially satisfied. 7/10.

Merry, Pippin and Fatty Bolger have figured out the plan months in advance and made their own plans, in such a way that when the black riders arrive in the region, they leave within 5 minutes and have a route planned out already.

I forgot about that part; thanks for reminding me. I watched the film the previous night, but it's obviously time for a reread :)

A Conspiracy Unmasked

I beg to differ.

(Yes this is an example of life imitating art, but as the other person said, isn't it so much more fun to pretend?)

I laud your devotion to accuracy, but I also offer some middle ground. Tobacco itself is known to possess psychoactive properties, and Middle-earth, insofar as it can be said to be a precursor to the modern world at all (for Tolkien himself drifted away from this idea later in his life and work), is eons in the past, when many things were heightened. So it's not so far a leap to imagine that pipeweed could have had as much in common with modern strains of marijuana as it did with what we call tobacco.

After all, our own tobacco originated in the Americas, probably somewhere in the region of modern Bolovia, and was not commonly used in Europe until the 16th Century. If one allows the conceit that Middle-earth represents a primordial version of modern Europe, then it follows that pipeweed itself also originated in the West (for was it not said to have been imported from Númenor, that land blessed by the Valar?). If indeed it was a strain of nicotiana, then it must have been of a varietal so pleasant to smoke that even the Valar themselves partook of it. At some point, it died out in the lands of Men, and was forgotten until its rediscovery by colonial exchanges with the indigenous people of the Americas.

TL;dr: Pipeweed is not weed, nor is it something modern people would recognize as garden variety tobacco. It's better than either of those things.

Isn't it more fun and whimsical to imagine something else though? That's the great thing about fiction: it can be whatever you want it to be.

I’m sorry to be that guy

lol no you're not.

It explicitly and unambiguously was tobacco, but it's still funny to think it was weed. Peter Jackson certainly liked to imply it was.

I’ve heard it both ways.

I didn't believe it's explicitly stated what exactly it is. Just the mention of different strains and flavors.

Pipe.

That's consistent with Sam's station as a humble gardener, not a member of the loose aristocracy class like Frodo or Merry and Pippin, who had the leisure and wont to go out a-walking just for fun - and also those latter had relatives near the south of the Shore, and so would have reason to visit the area.

Well it is tumblr, so higher than you think

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to got the title. Turns out, not long at all :)