transcript:
cat mum: what’s 6 times 7?
cat boy (making faces): 6 7!!!
cat mum: hilarious, as always. but actually …?
cat boy: 42
cat mum: 6 x 7 - 6 7 - is 42?!
cat boy: yeah … so?
cat mum (making faces): that means 6 7 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything!
cat boy: daddy! mommy’s being weird again!
cat dad: aww, you see son, - your mommy is just a huge dork!
cat mum: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes!
Isn’t that actually canon though? Cause the first book says the answer to the life, universe, and everything is 42, but then what is the question? And I think in the second book they answer that the question is 6x7
I didn’t read it, but I think SPOILER ALERT that it was 6x9 and than they were like “oh I always knew something was wrong”, or something like that.
Not sure though.
Yes. And then someone pointed out that 6×9 = 42 in base 13. To which DNA replied, “I may be a sorry case, but I don’t write jokes in base 13.”
https://alienencyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan
They got that question by drawing pieces from a set of scrabble tiles IIRC, and I just realised that Douglas Adams basically predicted LLMs.
The reason, or at least a significant part of the reason, if not the complete reason, that Arthur derives that question in particular is because he’s a result of the corruption of the calculation caused by the arrival of the B Ark of Golgafrinchams on Earth.
If Arthur had actually been a six foot tall Earth-ape descendant as described by the guide, his brain would have contained the actual answer rather than something almost but not quite totally unlike the true question.
Spot on.
Also: Knowledge of the answer precludes knowledge the question. Peak knew that.
But then the universe would have popped out of existence and been replaced by a more complicated one.
Again.
So we got lucky there.
W H A T D O Y O U G E T I F Y O U M U L T I P L Y S I X B Y N I N E
…had to downvote so your sum is appropriate…
Doing the Lord’s work.
oh thank you. i’m getting tired of being the only one saying that.
Remember, that’s where they ran out of tiles. It could have been ‘ninety’ or ‘nine minus 2’ or in base-13.
Personally I blame travel scrabble for that one.
6x9 IIRC. It’s not supposed to make sense.
the question in the book is 6×9, because of course it is
6 by 9, right?
No, the question ends up being “what is 6x8”, which they then surmise would explain why everything is all screwed up.
you have an off-by-one error
Thanks, fixed. Broken in any multi-universe.
Earth was destroyed before it finished calculating. Of course the Question, as expressed by Arthur (who was part of said calculation), was wrong.
Never mind the issue of corrupted data from Ark B…