Crossing Dublin without passing a pub: Joyce's puzzle solved

Software developer Rory McCann charts pub-free route across the city"Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub," muses Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's classic novel Ulysses. It's a conundrum that has intrigued literary visitors to the city for years and, until now, frustrated them.The Joycean quandary has just been solved by software developer Rory McCann, who came up with an algorithm to help him chart a pub-free route through Dublin's streets. Starting by plotting out 30 points around the city's canals, to represent the size Dublin would have been when Ulysses was published, he used data from the online editable map, OpenStreetMap, to pin down the locations of Dublin's 1,000-plus pubs,. He then set his algorithm to work to find a winding path across the city that does not pass within 35m of a pub.A few changes were made after people pointed out pubs which weren't on the map, but McCann is now satisfied that he has solved Bloom's 89-year-old puzzle ? just in time for Bloomsday (the annual celebration of all things Joyce and Ulysses) on 16 June."I started about a year ago, for Bloomsday last year, but didn't get the programme finished in time. I picked it up again about a month ago and worked on it in my spare time again. Once I'd finished writing the programme, it takes about 15 minutes before it found the route in question," he said. "I haven't done all of it myself yet, but I know people who have cycled it, and said it was good. I checked it on Google Street View."He was moved to create his algorithm, he said, because it sounded "like an interesting problem", but he has never read Ulysses, coming at the puzzle "from the technical 'hey-that's-an-interesting-problem' side, rather than the literary side"."I'm a big OpenStreetMap fan, and fan of open data. It's a well-known problem in Dublin, and many people have tried to solve it themselves in pubs," he said. "Among the OpenStreetMap community here in Dublin, it's something that we've thought we could solve (thanks to open data). I started thinking about it, and could see it coming together in my head, so had a stab at it, et voila!"Next up, he's said, might well be the opposite challenge: a route around Dublin which passes as many of the city's drinking houses as possible.James JoyceFictionAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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