Tag Archives: puzzles

The Challenge Is Over: An Update On 583.74

I’m composing this post in a loud and crowded pub on W. 30th Street in NYC. And I’m using my iPad instead of my trusty laptop.

I’m going through this tortuous experience to lessen the anxiety in my readers lives who have been waiting for the Answer to my challenge about the meaning of the 583.74 sign on the wall of the Shamrock bar in Saranac Lake, NY.

To my astonishment, it was solved in a couple of hours by a Carol F. She says she went to school with my wife in Queens, NY.

583.74, my friends, is the Dewey Decimal number for the plant group that includes the Shamrock. I should have known this…I’m Irish, for heaven sake!

Another woman, a friend of ours, also came through.

My daughter, Erin, you know, the mother of my grandson, Elias, didn’t read the post until the next morning. She said she had the answer before she finished her morning coffee.

It’s all so depressing in a strange way. I feel like an undereducated senile guy with gray hair and an aching back…let’s not go there, ok?

But, dear friends and readers and followers, don’t give up on me.

I am planning a breath-taking blog in the planning stages right now…it’s a detailed account of my two-hour MRI at Mount Sinai a day ago.

I’m sure you will be riveted to your Barcaloungers, or the 19th hole somewhere in North Carolina or Boca.

There is not enough being written about MRI’s these days. Steinbeck barely touched on it and it’s mentioned in Shakespeare only twice.

Love to you all. Follow me and share the love.

583.74

This post is a puzzle for my readers who want a challenge or something to keep them busy if they have too much time on their hands.  I suppose that the former is what they want.  So, anyone out there who is up to the challenge?

Last week, or perhaps it was the week before…or maybe it was about a month ago, I happened to stop in at our most local pub, The Shamrock.  It’s about five miles away from our house so I wouldn’t exactly called it a “local”…but, up here in the North Country, “local” can mean someplace within a sixty mile radius.

This isn’t Manhattan.  Ok, we got that..

As I was sitting and chatting to the bartender of this, our local, (Mina is her name), we began to chat about a bit of paper that was pinned to the walled behind the bar…along with the signed dollar bills that were signed and tacked to the wall.  My guess is that there was al least $300. in inked notes..

Now, when we bought our house up here in 2001, this pub didn’t exist.  I finally stopped by the place and enjoyed a beer.

There was a small note (in a frame) behind the bar. On it was simply:

583.74

I asked the bartender, Mina, what that meant.  She suggested I guess.

As a geographer and a person who has some kind  of working knowledge of GPS, latitude and longitude and Mercator Projections polar centric maps and satellite imagery,  I told Mina not to tell me what the numbers meant.

She obliged and said it was up to me to figure out what that number meant. I thought and tried to find the significance of that number, I came up empty.

So, after years (and spending not a great deal of time thing about this number), I finally asked her what it meant.

She told me and it made perfect sense.

The name of the pub is the Shamrock.  Is that a hint?  If you think you know what that number means, offers your answers in my email or in a response here on this web blog.

If you’ve ever been in the Shamrock or know me, or know the answer already, then don’t be a spoiler.

Otherwise, it’s not much fun.

If you solve it, and you’re local, the round is on me.

In case you don’t have my email…it’s pegan7@roadrunner.com.

I hope to hear from you, and laugh silently at how wrong your guesses are.