| MERRY | One of the Tolkienian Hobbits of The Shire with Bilbo, Frodo, Pippin and Samwise; word meaning cheerful, festive, jolly or tipsy; or, a name for the English wild cherry (5) |
| FRODO | Hobbit of the Shire |
| COUNTESS | One leaves the shires with small aristocrat (8) |
| DUO | Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee or Nemo and Dory, e.g. |
| COUNTY | Shire with nobleman and youth leader (6) |
| LOTR | Frodo/Pippin franchise, for short |
| BOTTOMSUP | Said, though unlikely, to stem from an old naval trick of slipping a coin into a person's beer glass as a form of bribery, a hail meaning "cheers", "chin-chin" or "skol" (7,2) |
| PROSIT | From "may it benefit", a traditional German drinking toast meaning "cheers!", "good health!" or "skol!" (6) |
| GANDALF | Wizard who meets with Bilbo in the opening of Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' (7) |
| HOBBIT | 2012 film with Bilbo and Gollum, The ___: An Unexpected Journey (6) |
| BALIN | Dwarf who traveled with Bilbo |
| GAMGEE | Hobbit family of the Shire, one of whom, Samwise, accompanied Frodo Baggins on his adventures (6) |
| UNDERHILL | Frodo's alias when escaping The Shire in the first volume of Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings trilogy |
| SHIRE | Home of Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry, with "the" |
| SEANASTIN | US actor who played the role of Samwise Gamgee in the Lord Of The Rings movie trilogy (4,5) |
| COUNT | An equal to Earl Peel, the last of the shire (5) |
| HOBBITON | ...venture to the center of The Shire |
| APPLE | Pome with varieties including beauty of Bath, Blenheim orange, Cox's orange pippin and Cornish gilliflower (5) |
| TOLKIEN | Creator of the Shire's hole-dwelling, second breakfast-loving hobbits (7) |
| UMBRELLATREE | Possibly magnolia, I'm thinking, is higher back in village east of the Shire (8,4) |
