Left to right: Andriani Psaras, Yiangos (aka Yiangoulis) Psaras, Georgos Psaras, Vassiliki Psaras (my grandmother), Anastasia Psaras

During my childhood years in Cyprus, my parents used to occasionally take me and my sister to visit my grandmother’s brother, Yiangoulis, and his wife, Anna. Their house, with its acres of backyard citrus orchards, was off the road to Kourion, our favorite beach, and so often we would pull off the cypress-flanked road into their driveway for a coffee and ‘glyko karidaki,’ a Cypriot dessert of whole green walnuts that have been boiled and preserved in a thick sugar syrup. 

James Joyce

Despite living on a fruit farm, Yiangoulis was almost always buttoned up as if he’d just returned from some august country club beyond the lemon groves and droning cicadas. A tall lanky man, with round black wiry glasses, long delicate fingers and small sharp eyes, he didn’t look like a Cypriot (in fact, now that I think of it, he looked like James Joyce). He was a gambler and backyard magician who would offer us money if we solved one of his riddles, which inevitably involved numeric puzzles or matches arranged in infuriating geometric formations. 

One day, my sister, Yangoulis and I were sitting at a white plastic table in the shade of a tangerine tree. He retrieved a five-pound bill from his wallet and, after brushing some of the tiny dry tangerine leaves off the table surface, slapped the money down. He stared at us from behind those wiry rims. 

“Tell me how many 9s there are from zero to 100 and this is yours. You only get one guess.” 

It was the equivalent of $12, a tidy fortune to our eight- and six-year-old minds. Woozy with the prospect of sudden wealth and mushy-headed from an afternoon of hurling ourselves into breaking waves, we prematurely blurted out our guesses. With a faint smile, he pocketed the bill and then—breaking one of the magician’s cardinal rules (he was never much for rules)—told us the right answer. Like any veteran gambler, he knew how to coolly weigh risk against profit odds. The chance of losing the bill was clearly worth the pleasure of returning it to his wallet and revealing the answer. Yiangoulis was shrewd enough to know that the prospect of so much money would jelly our judgment. 

Over the following two-plus decades, I have posed this riddle numerous times, occasionally offering money. There’s nothing insidious or deceptive about the answer, but for whatever reason, of the dozens of people who’ve offered an answer, only a few have nailed it on the first try. 

There is a reason for bringing this up. In my first Fourth Night essay I claimed I was going to post writing on the 4^th night of every month. Since 2005 I have, more or less, done that, although admittedly a few of my posts were apologies of the “sorry, not done yet, check back in a few days” variety. As of today, this mission statement—a monthly posting every 4^th night—is undergoing a reinterpretation. Just as there is more than one 9 from zero to 100, there is also more than one 4 from zero to 31. There are in fact three: 4, 14, and 24. In short, by this new definition, the fourth night arrives every ten days (with exceptions depending on the month and the rare leap year): the 4^th, the 14^th, and the 24^th. 

Fourth Night, in other words, has just grown two more heads. From now on I will post three nights a month. This may disappoint those of you who prefer the heartier monthly essays, for these postings will be shorter, but I’m afraid that you are, like me, a dying disemboweled minority in an era where most communication online takes place not in number of pages, nor even in number of words, but rather in number of characters. This blog is still something of a dinosaur. It’s just that it’s now a little farther along the evolutionary chain. 

As for the 9s-in-a-100 puzzle, if you have yet to guess, take 30 seconds and give it a try. Once you’ve settled on a number, CLICK HERE for the answer.

Now that the comment feature is again properly functional, feel free to comment on just how much this exercise has enriched your intellectual landscape, elevated your consciousness, and invigorated your sexual life. And, please, don’t thank me. Thank Yiangoulis.  

To his memory and to the new zeitgeist of Fourth Night, which celebrates all numerical permutations, however arbitrary they may be. 

-Constantine Markides