On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Andrew Turner wrote:

> > > I thought it was "What is 6 multiplied by 9?"...
> > 
> > gotta love Douglas Adams.  ^_^
> > 
> > The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything:  42

> > 
> > The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything: 
> > What do you get when you multiply six by nine?
> 
> Er, isn't it 6 by 7?  But didn't the mice decide it was too literal?  I
> thought they decided to report the Question as "How many roads must a man go
> down?", and the answer as "42".

No! The problem was that Earth was destroyed *before* the question was
completed. The mice wanted to get it from Athur, but when he escaped,
they had to make something up.

In the second (or third) volume, Arthur tries to extract the answer from
his own brain, and comes up with "What is 6 by 9". However, Arthur and
Ford had just discovered that mankind were the descendants of the people
from Golgafrincham who were not a part of the original design of Earth,
which explains why his result wasn't quite correct. Still, it's not
all that difficult to deduct the right one from there. Which closes the
circle...


 

Michael "Brazil" Borgwardt --- Member of #WASHU# and Her would-be guinea-pig.
        Untiring defender of Washu-chan, Asuka-chan and Elektra-chan. 
   A Homepage for Elektra: http://www.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~borgward/
      AnT - Animeclub fuer Deutschland: http://anime.no.tomodachi.de/
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