Over the weekend, director Peter Jackson held a live video chat to promote his second Hobbit film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and Tolkien superfan Stephen Colbert is not someone to miss that.

After beating James Franco on the trivia of Tolkien’s Silmarillion^[1], a narrative describing the land within which the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit took place, the U.S. TV host once again demonstrated his profound knowledge of Tolkien’s fantasy world. He eagerly asked Peter Jackson one incredibly esoteric question about if the next Hobbit film would differentiate between the Sindarin elves and the elves living in Mirkwood, who share some ancestral roots but are completely different beings.

(WATCH: Stephen Colbert Schools James Franco in Lord Of The Rings Trivia Smackdown)^[2]

Jackson, undeterred, responded with one word: yes. But the director had more important things he wanted to discuss with Colbert: specifically, the quality of the mugs The Colbert Report gives out to guests as gifts.

Colbert, who reportedly reads Quenya^[3], an Elvish dialect Tolkien invented for his LOTR saga, is said to make a cameo in Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, according to The Hollywood Reporter.^[4] The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug will be released in the U.S. on Dec. 13.

(MORE: TIME’s Guide to The Hobbit’s 13 Dwarves^[5])