Didn't Sauron Know?

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by aeglos
So how could the three be under the spell of the one if Sauron did not know of their existence?

I don't remember the UT version, but my feeling was that Sauron knew about the three, and when he put his ring on, it was detected, so the three went into hiding.

aeglos:
In all of this he knew that no one could wrestle control of the ring from him and that the only way to destroy the ring was to return it to Mt Doom and it seems that logically he would protect all approaches to that area.

That's not entirely true. Sauron feared that another would use the ring against him. And there were some contenders who could have done so with great effeciency, eg Gandalf, and perhaps even Aragorn... then Saruman.

Sauron could not conceive that the free peoples would want to destroy the ring; that is why he didn't work that into the equation. He could not get his head around the concept that they did not want to use the power of the ring to dominate over the enemy.

aeglos
Sauron may have been over confident that with or without the ring he could finally triumph. But he definetly knew the Ring was out there and should have been able to find it.

Yeah, but Middle Earth ain't that small. The task of finding one small ring, even with leads, is pretty daunting!