Editing 1087: Cirith Ungol

{{comic
| number    = 1087
| date      = July 27, 2012
| title     = Cirith Ungol
| image     = cirith_ungol.png
| titletext = My all-time favorite example of syntactic ambiguity comes from Wikipedia: 'Charlotte's Web is a children's novel by American author E. B. White, about a pig named Wilbur who is saved from being slaughtered by an intelligent spider named Charlotte.'
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a mash-up between the ''{{w|Lord of the Rings}}'' trilogy and the novel ''{{w|Charlotte's Web}}''.

The title {{w|List_of_minor_places_in_Middle-earth#Cirith_Ungol|Cirith Ungol}} is a reference to ''Lord of the Rings'' where {{w|Frodo Baggins}} and {{w|Samwise Gamgee}} were led to Cirith Ungol by {{w|Gollum}} and to the lair of the ancient spider {{w|Shelob}}.

And therefore in this comic, Frodo (by himself) is being led into the lair of the spider, Charlotte. We can tell by the "Some Pig" writing in the spider web on the lower right hand corner which is a direct reference to the story of ''Charlotte's Web'', in which a spider named Charlotte writes the very same text in her web.

The title text refers to syntactic ambiguity which is a property of sentences which may be reasonably interpreted in more than one way, or reasonably interpreted to mean more than one thing. This allows us to derive two different meanings from the same sentence. 

The second part of the title text is a quote from Wikipedia, which Randall enjoys for its  syntactic ambiguity, as it can be logically interpreted in either of the following ways:
*Charlotte the spider saves Wilbur from slaughter.
*Charlotte the spider attempts to slaughter Wilbur, but he is saved.

This quote was modified the same day the comic appeared [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charlotte%27s_Web&diff=prev&oldid=504373211]. It could be found on [https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Charlotte%27s_Web_%28book%29&type=revision&diff=2121121&oldid=2039481 Wikiquote] until 27 April 2016.

A similar ambiguity explicitly discussed in the title text of [[1004: Batman]].

== Transcript ==
:[A character in a long flowing robe holds up the Phial of Galadriel in one hand; the One Ring is dangling from a necklace in the other. The scene is a cave, profuse with spiderwebs, bones hanging in some of them. On one of the webs are words, presumably written by the spider.]

:SOME PIG

==Trivia==
*This comic caused a minor edit war on Wikipedia's [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charlotte%27s_Web&diff=504553453&oldid=504551496 Charlotte's Web] article.

{{Comic discussion}}
[[Category:LOTR]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Spiders]]