Excellent quiz, thank you! I thought I wasn't going to remember the city where Tolkien lived, but then I guessed the quotation even before having all the answers and it gave me the first letter for that question ("O"). So easy! Oxford, of course!
When the word for the race of tree creatures is on the tip of your tongue, and you know it is a short word that starts with E and has a T in it, but you can't pull this word out of your brain...
21/28, 75%... pretty good considering the only Hobbit/Lord of the Rings media I have ever consumed was the movie Battle of the Five Armies (it was at a party, ok, I got outvoted. Yes, I was very confused. No, I had no idea what was going on. No, that movie did not help me with any of these answers)
Tolkien did go away from the Orcs as Elves thing towards the end of his life, if I remember correctly. He never really decided what they were, probably some corrupted race of men as Melkor was canonically incapable of creating original life.
Orcs as Men does lead to some issues, as Orcs predate the existence of Men by quite a bit in the Silmarillion, which is why Tolkien never really firmly decided on it, as it would have led him to have to rework the timeline.
I misread Sauruman as Sauron, misread "what shadowfax was" as "what shadowfax HAS" and simply didn't see the Rivendell question.
I shouldn't take these quizzes right after waking up...
Orcs as Men does lead to some issues, as Orcs predate the existence of Men by quite a bit in the Silmarillion, which is why Tolkien never really firmly decided on it, as it would have led him to have to rework the timeline.