There is a small walled grotto where the passage of time has seemed to stop. There is a sense of power about
the place. On one wall you see enscribed in runes and glyphs of power:
d r ó û k n n a l t a o h n i
The essence of power seems to await just a one or two word answer to the riddle… What word(s) or name
will Zazite say ? (If no response is given, he will be assumed to have fled the scene.)
Brian,
If anyone has solved that one, they’ve kept it to themselves. It’s one of the very few original riddles from the original programming yet to be solved – might be the only one for all I know.
Drew
And since there are 1,307,674,368,000 different arrangements of those letters, I am thinking it will continue to be unsolved.
Now you have me thinking.
The d isn’t a d…
What is it then?
If anyone wants to brave a London times membership - a google search with the following words ‘drouk altaone’ reveals a 4 page article in 1812. I couldn’t access it without a membership (which as an Australian would be totally boring! 
If someone does go there - can you tell us what it’s all about.
Cheers
Rob
The tlot phickens!
I googled it up and it looks like “drouk” might some Gaelic form of “drank or drunk”. It said " a toast was drouk with…"
The problem with altaone is that the letter list has no “e”
I looked up drouk in a couple ‘old Norse’ dictionaries but it doesn’t appear. The root of ‘drouk’ was thought to be ‘drukna’ from old Norse. So that will be a dead end. In the Scottish dictionary ‘drouk’ means To drench or soak. However neither Altaohni, Altaone, Naltaone nor Nnaltaone appear. The only google search that reveals anything remains the London Times which has a single article with a hit on Drouk Altaone. I’ve tried the site but you cannot get into the article. You MUST at the very least take a free 7 day trial but they’ll require credit card details. I’m not that excited myself.
As to Tolkien - he was a professor dealing with ancient languages, the chances he was spelling in some convention other than the mainstream Anglicized conventions was pretty high. I think it would be sufficient for us to decipher what this drouk altaone means. Or I could be wrong but who’ll ever know?
OK, here is some food for thought as we are trying to solve this, can and of YOU see anyhting in here, not saying this is the way to go.
d r o u k n n a l t a o h n i
e s p v l o o b m u b p i o j
f t q w m p p c n v c q j p k
g u r x n q q d o w d r k q l
h v s y o r r e p x e s l r m
i w t z p s s f q y f t m s n
j x u a q t t g r z g u n t o
k y v b r u u h s a h v o u p
l z w c s v v i t b i w p v q
m a x d t w w j u c j x q w r
n b y e u x x k v d k y r x s
o c z f v y y l w e l z s y t
p d a g w z z m x f m a t z u
q e b h x a a n y g n b u a v
r f c i y b b o z h o c v b w
s g d j z c c p a i p d w c x
t h e k a d d q b j q e x d y
u i f l b e e r c k r f y e z
v j g m c f f s d l s g z f a
w k h n d g g t e m t h a g b
x l i o e h h u f n u i b h c
y m j p f i i v g o v j c i d
z n k q g j j w h p w k d j e
a o l r h k k x i q x l e k f
b p m s i l l y j r y m f l g
c q n t j m m z k s z n g m h
I saw beer, silly and sorry. I also saw that you progressed through the alphabet on each column - otherwise I’ve got nothin’ I’d wonder then why the funny little squiggles above the ‘o’ and ‘u’ were incorporated if it’s a simple progression of letters?
Wow Winsten! You’re good! All I saw was beer.
I also got a pile of dirty words we won’t talk about Wonder if that was the hidden message? 
It was just an idea, to see if the word was a cypher!
Unless you’ve got inside information I’d think that it isn’t a cypher due to those two little squiggles. They suggest language not random letters. Pity we haven’t got a Scottish language expert. Ah well, just one of those mysteries that shall remain. Can always 900 the artifact anyway
I think you have to use the Spanish “y” for “and”: “bye u y we the beer silly”
Here is another random idea about the d r a u g … riddle.
maybe it’s a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_cipher and then the question is which book, the hobbit, lotr, the two towers, the 1000 rulebook ??
No inside info, just trying to solve this.
I have always suspected something from the Silmarillian. No doubt about it.