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Not the answer to life, the universe and everything.

• The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is 42.
  • The ants are my friends too!

42 for all the above.

• Of course, the correct question is: "How many years can some people exist, before they're allowed to be free?" (42 years: from the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in February 1948, to the Velvet Revolution of November 1989.)
  • No, people are never free. But how many Celsius degrees are necessary to start protein degradation?
• "Do I know what 'rhetorical' means?!"

42! No, wait... 43! No, wait... 44!

• In basic?

Canon evidence: In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Marvin reveals that he knows the question, which he read from Arthur's brain. (He also has a brain the size of a planet, which presumably is necessary for calculating it in the first place.) Later, in Life, the Universe, and Everything, he says to Zem the mattress:

Marvin: Pick a number, any number.
Zem: Er, five.
Marvin: Wrong. You see?

• Technically that's not a question.
  • No wonder no one else has been able to figure it out.
• reword to "What number am I thinking of that is between -∞ and ∞ to actually make a question.
  • Technically, it would be 'what number are you thinking of?'
  • I figure it's "Pick a number, any number" in the form of a question. Because nobody has figured out what that would be, the universe has not been destroyed.

Exactly one and a half.

• So, does that make me the one or the half?
  • Yes.
• You'd care if it was a password (like, maybe you say it to Saint Peter and you get to enter heaven, or you say it to the mirror and God answers all your questions about life).

The true answer would, of course, be "54"; since we all know the answer is "42", this shows that the universe is inherently off-kilter.

• This question was acquired in the third book via a random draw from a bag full of Scrabble tiles - however, this would be impossible with a regulation Scrabble set (too many Ys, for one thing), meaning the result was not only influenced by the Golgafrinchams, but by a faulty set of tiles. Either that, or Arthur had made some spare tiles, due to the cavemen tossing the letter Q into privet bushes (oh wait, that one was Ford), and this troper thinks too much.
• This troper has calculated that there is, in fact, a time in which 6 x 9 does, in fact, equal 42... when you're working in Base 13.
  • See above about base 13.
  • To quote Mr. Adams himself "I don't write my jokes in base 13!"

Well, Arthur Dent figured it out after all!!

• This troper is reminded of a fanfiction she read once which combined the actual Scrabble tile-drawn question of "six by nine", stated above, with this. Some people...
• 42..Kneeling on the ground and nuzzling your partner while giving him anal sex while he is stroking himself?
  • Aha! So that means the answer is actually gay sex! IT'S TRUE! HOMOSEXUALITY WILL BRING ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!
    • It could be interpreted as the male kneeling while the female strokes him from between her knees and recieves cunnilingus from behind. So if you multiply ("x", or cross around) 6 by 9... It sort of works.

That's what the mice asked, and where told that it isn't the real question

• No, the mice didn't ask anything. They just told Deep Thought to tell them the answer.

• African or European?
  • Arcturan Mega-.
• They migrate!
• Blue. No, Yellow!
• Depends on whether it's laden with a coconut or a holy hand grenade.
• Un-laden, it's approximately 20 mph.

Ask any magician; they'll tell you that it is, in fact, 37. At least, that's what everyone thinks when they're asked to select a two-digit number between 1 and 50, with both digits being odd, but not the same number...

• 37?! (Really hoping somebody gets the reference...)
• In a row?!

The real question has nothing to do with "what do you get if you multiply ___ by ___," but does indeed include the numbers six and nine.

• So it's sex.

Well, it fits with the whole "if both are known, the universe will be destroyed and replaced by something much more confusing" assertion.

42!!!

The mice decided to play it safe and not let humans know the answer, in case knowing both might cancel out the universe.

• Alternately, Deep Thought never told the mice the correct answer. Maybe it couldn't even figure out the answer, and a) just wanted to see if the mice would build Earth, b) wanted to live for a few billion more years, or c) just wanted to show up the Great Hyperbolic Omnicognate Neutron Wrangler.
  • The answer might be... Boobies. Size 42... It's B-cups, BTW.

You can't handle the truth! Logic Bomb!

• 6 x 9 fingers.
  • 6+9 is fifteen... fifteen divided by five is three, Zaphod Beeblebrox has three arms, and we don't know that he doesn't have one six-fingered hand and one hand mising a finger... So he's holding up six fingers on one side by nine on the other... Woah... Woah.

#define SIX 1+5

#define NINE 8+1

int main()

{

printf("How much do you get if you mulitiply SIX by NINE? %i!",SIX*NINE");

}

Of course, the program will output 42, because SIX*NINE will be interpreted as 1+5*8+1=1+40+1=42, not as (1+5)*(8+1)=6*9=56.

• Presumably meaning that the universe is written in C.
  • There are worse ways to code the universe. It's probably actually written in some kind of brainfuck-malbolge hybrid language, which would make some progress towards explaining Murphy's Law.

We believe that there are an infinite number of universes, and everything that happens in the Hitchhiker universe after Arthur and Ford are picked up by the Heart of Gold is dependent on this fact, so if it is discovered that there are only 42, then the "universe" (that is, our perception of it) will be destroyed and be replaced by something infinitely weirder (by being not infinite).

Some guy who wrote the book of love.

42.

The reflexive property at work. It states that every number equals itself. So, 42 = 42.

• This implies an Objectivist universe, which is truly terrifying.
• Didn't the ACTUAL answer get revealed as some other number in one of the later books anyway?
  • The above troper is probably thinking of Stavromula Beta being revealed as Stavro Mueller's Beta Club in Mostly Harmless, which doesn't count anyway.
    • Or God's final message to His creation: We apologize for the inconvenience. It made Marvin happy.
• And perhaps the penultimate answer is also 42. I have often heard the following exchange:
  Person 1: 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
  Person 2: What's the question?
  Person 1: That is the question.
  • So it stands to reason that the final exchange is as follows: (keeping in mind that ultimate means "final")
  Penultimate question: What's the question?
  Penultimate answer: 42.
  Ultimate question: 42?
  Ultimate answer: 42.

47

• canned laughter*
  • 41.98765432123456789 (squared... to the 10th power... cubed)

One, we know that Arthur is very important from the man who had too much Truth Serum. Secondly, we know that our perception of time is not necessarily the right direction. Take both the New Guide's comment on "You think Time runs that way?", along with the decreasing Zaphod Beeblebroxes ("The Nothingth!") Lastly, correlate the facts that "Knowing the Answer and the Question will recreate the Universe into something much more weird", "Some people believe that this has already happened", how (after Arthur's death) "Television was less interesting", and the way time actually goes opposite to what we know.

Since Grover Cleveland is counted as two people, this means that the universe will end on January 19, 2009, at precisely 11:59:59:99.

• But...but.... I was gonna vote for Dunkelzahn! And Michael Wilson! More to the point, wouldn't Cleveland counting as two people be the inverse of your point, meaning the world technically ended after the Clinton admin-Oh, wait...
  • No, you're confusing "counted" and "counting." Cleveland does not count as two people in the literal sense, but people will still count him as two presidents when he was actually the same president with two terms. In other words:
  A square never has three sides, but a square and something with three sides is a triangle.

  • He wasn't the only president that served two terms. I think most of them did. Certainly you wouldn't count him twice because his terms weren't consecutive. While we're at it, what about David Rice Atchison who may or may not have been president for a day depending on your interpretation? How about the 16 Presidents of Continental Congress? Washington was just the first after the Constitution was adopted. It seems Taft was the 42nd President of the United States. Also, this doesn't say when the universe will end, just when the United States will. If there's a revolution during the 42 President's term resulting in either there being no United States or the United States not having a President, there will only have been 42 Presidents when the world ends.
• Maybe this one wasn't so off after all. Well done.

So the book says six, but then again, we've only seen about 4 at one time, what's to say that was a valid rule?

• Actually its six excluding ones owned by shinigami clearly 42 is how many can function in the human realm including ones owned by shinigami.
  • Shinigami? Shi-ni-gami? 4-2-gami? This might actually be plausible.
  • Nicely caught. *marks down to bring up to friends*

That is the question.

Here's a cookie if you get the reference.

• William Shatner?
  • Or alternately- how many shots does the Staff of Life have?

• Think about it. If 1 times 0 equals 0, and 42 times 0 equals 0, then 42 times 0 equals 1 times 0. Cancel the zeroes and you get 42 = 1.
  • You divided by zero! Way to doom mankind, man.
    • So the theory about the universe restarting was right. Clearly the first person who said that out loud said it on the eleventh of May, 2001, thus killing Douglas Adams and ending the universe of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy permanently and without reprieve. It all makes sense now!

Wait, no, that's ridiculous. That's not even funny.

42.

It appears nobody has remembered Fenchurch. You know, the one who knew the question and how to make everyone happy? Yeah, her. I think what happened goes something like this;

[Fenchurch takes a sip of coffee]

Fenchurch: Hmm... Why is everyone so sad? If only we could... Hmm...

[Fenchurch takes another sip]

Fenchurch: Maybe if we... THAT'S IT! ...But, how many years would it take? Hmm... Probably about... Forty-tw-

[Vogons destroy the Earth]

See the H 2 G 2 entry here (the Literature one, not the Live-Action TV one).

Well, according to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, if this question were ever answered, then the universe would disappear and be replaced by something much more complex. This go around, we finally ask how many times this has happened before.

As above, but this time, we want to know how many more times we'll answer it before the Universe becomes too complex to answer.

Apparently the Universe didn't like the original series, or the Doctor-lite Blink.

The answer is that life has meaning because everything will eventually die. The computer just said it in a really weird way (possibly because it knew that no one would like that answer). 42=shini=die.

Or it would have been, if not for the question eating itself than spitting it back out, due to the sheer audacity of the issue, being both the question and the answer of the question's nature.

42. Well, the question's been debated for a long time, and the answer would be numerical, so...

• I don't care what you say, the answer is six.
• One. (As long as it's the gavotte.)

42. The universe has just gotten slightly stranger for each person who read that. And may have been catapulted into a bottomless ravine.

• 42 as in... 000042? Or while we are at it, #000042?
  • Hmm... Ooh, dark blue. Nice. Not my favorite color, but... Nice. Hmm... And #420000 is a dark shade of red... Possibly the placement of 42 within the hexadecimal color code is relative?
    • And there IS a sentient shade of dark blue...

Well... Perhaps it's not 42, but 6, or 8.

When Deep Thought was set to work calculating the Answer, there was a heated argument nearby involving a pair of philosophers, who complained that there was no need for them to wonder whether or not God exists if a machine can give you his phone number. Soon after, Deep Thought announces its circuits are irrevocably committed to calculating the Answer.

• Then what's the country code?

The Answer would make sense only if the Universe didn't contain any of this troublesome "life" that keeps doing things on its own and mucking up complex calculations by crash-landing on computer-planets and such. If there was no life, the Answer 42 would make sense, but there would be no one around to make sense of it. As it happens, life does exist, so the Answer doesn't make sense.

• One could go on to say that if you did manage to make sense of the fundamentally nonsensical Answer, then anything that made sense before would suddenly not make sense, since you've changed your mind so entirely by understanding the Answer that it cannot comprehend anything else. Thus the Universe, for you, at least, has been replaced by something infinitely more bizarre (since this is an infinite Universe and all). It's all a matter of perspective (which I'm sure is a concept mentioned in the Trilogy somewhere - the Total Perspective Vortex, for one).
• Or, possibly, it's the answer to Daniel Tammet. Somebody, get him to model what he sees 42 as!

Well, take someone really, really important that was born on 12/30, and ask what's the result of the sum of their birthmonth and birthday (not birthyear, of course). Or maybe it's something else, but I can't recall...

Someone(possibly Fenchurch) figured out the Question-Answer pair ("What is six times seven?" "42." or some variant), and the universe changed into something much stranger. When the Universe was altered, the Answer had to change as well, because it is the Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

• 2+2=The answer?

For you see, the answer, forty two, is actually a letter of the alphabet. Because there are only twenty-six letters, you need to loop it. The result is 'P', essentially 'B' but slightly different. So, quite simply, Life, The Universe, and Everything is simply because it is. It exists because it should. It took the 'be' option. It is. We are. This could also be interpreted as there being no true answer. Or, if you flip the numbers around and find the twenty-fourth, you get X- a letter commonly used for variables. So one should go beyond the impossible and kick reason to the curb, because absolutely anything could happen or be.

Did I just make the Universe a bit weirder?

Deep Thought was so powerful that it broke the Fourth Wall.

Add to that everyone who's trying to think about what the question is outside of here...that's a lot of extra weirdness.

Biofuel is the key to efficient FTL travel.

It's got a very low chemical tolerance for an omnipotent being.

When you reach 42, the universe flips in-squide-uot.

This is a continuation of a WMG posted in Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. It states that God's final message to his creation is seen differently by every person. What would it say to something apparently with no sentience? 42.

42.

What is the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything?

Ourselves.

42, off course.

42, of course. The only problem is thanks to Dolmansaxlil Shoe Shop, you can't find a fitting pair from Earth.

The phonetic pronunciation of 42

This one comes from a readthrough of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The question "Where does it all end?" comes at the bottom of page 42, and with the spacing that the publication used, it looks like the editor was responding to the question as it was posed

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