the ultimate question

[bogwood]

what is the ultimate question (hitch hikers guide)

[stoo_pid]

No-one knows (except perhaps Douglas Adams & he's not likely to tell us now).

Some theories here

[BigMac]

When extrapolated from Arthur's brain, by using the random element of a bag full of scrabble tiles, it came out as "What do you get when you multiply six by nine..."

But at the very end, God's final message to His creation was given as "Sorry for the inconvenience". Perhaps the question is hidden there?

[Fat Boy]

6x9=42 works if you count in base-13 (although don't forget the answer was spoken as "forty-two", not "four, two"). As you can imagine this led plenty of HHGG fans to speculate what Douglas Adams meant by the base-13 thing.

When questioned about the question, Adams replied, "The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story."

[posypink]

I know they said they wanted the answer to everything, life the universe, everything etc - they just weren't specific! So got 42 and that was that! lol

Still it seems a good answer to questions that you don't get or if someone is annoying you. Say 42 and they try and work out the relevance for a while! It is great fun!!