[Quincy]

What is your most frequently asked question?

maybe someone will have the answer to one of your questions, who knows, who cares.

why dont they have parachutes on aeroplanes?

[Gaspode_The_Wonder_Dog]

why?

thats the most asked. by my fecking nephew. THE ANSWER IS BECAUSE.

[DemonHorse]

The universal answer is 42

[Jono]

Mine's usually, why the feck did I do that

[Sidders]

The universal answer is 42

Except it isn't. I hate it when people mis-quote that.

[DemonHorse]

Its the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything, therefore somehow covering every concievable question and making it a universal answer.

[Sidders]

No, it's 4213

[Sheep]

So if someone asked me how old i was, that would make me 42 and a 13th?

[Sidders]

The 13 means it's in base 13, so 4213 translates in decimal to 54.

[Sheep]

So i would still be 42 years old.... +a bit

[Sidders]

No you would be 54.

[Gaspode_The_Wonder_Dog]

but it wasnt the answer to that question anyway. and i havent even read the crappy book.

[Console]

No, it's 4213

Sorry Sidla, but your wrong. According to H2G2 the answer to 'Life, the Universe and Everything" is 42. The base 13 part your referring to is in fact a theory to explain why the answer is 42 when the question Arthur Dent comes up with is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine' (The resturant at the end of the Universe), which of course is 54. Before he died, DNA was asked if the theory was correct and he replied with "nobody writes jokes in base 13." and also "I may be a pretty sad person, but I don't make jokes in base 13".

Apparantly its just coincidence.

Oh and Gaspode, the Hitchhikers book kick arse, you should read them.

[Sheep]

Thats not a very goo universal answer then is it?
Its way off....

[Console]

Ahh, thats only until you figure out the question...

[Sheep]

yes, but how can the answer to everything be 42?

[Console]

Figure out the question and understand the answer will you.

[Lucie]

I ask way too many questions. Most of them are unanswered.

[DemonHorse]

According to H2G2 the answer to 'Life, the Universe and Everything" is 42. The base 13 part your referring to is in fact a theory to explain why the answer is 42 when the question Arthur Dent comes up with is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine' (The resturant at the end of the Universe), which of course is 54. Before he died, DNA was asked if the theory was correct and he replied with "nobody writes jokes in base 13." and also "I may be a pretty sad person, but I don't make jokes in base 13".

bit in bold is the question, answer is 42 as the rest of this quote explains.

[Console]

Actually the books never say that the question is 'What do you get if you multiply six by nine', infact it almost says the complete opposite. At the end of the series they still haven't found the question, infact the above question was from the second book and Arthur is still looking for the question in book 4 (So long and thanks for all the fish), because he thinks Fenchurch figured out the question shortly before Earth was demolished and tries to get it from her, but getting something completely different instead.

[DemonHorse]

ah that was just one question they got because it was supposedly trapped inside Arthur's head at one point (they had some of this stuff in a very weird order in the film, but I hope they do another 4 films, or at least more films to cover the bits film 1 didn't cover.

The computer created to compute the question for the answer was earth, but the Vogons stopped the program very shortly before it was finished by destroying Earth... again. (the books are starting to blur for me, as I got the 5 in 1 omnibus edition. I seem to remember book 5 (mostly harmless) as being a bit pointless?

[Sheep]

Ok i never read the books, but today i have learnt im not 42

[Console]

Don't forget the Golgafrinchams from which Arthur desended, they would also screw with the calculations of planet Earth.

As for book 5, it was a bit of a let down, although still humorous in places 'The King' and 'The Sandwich maker', good little jokes, but not as good as the first books.

[Sidders]

I can't dispute Console because I've never read the book, but one of our lecturers told us it was 42 base 13 and he was a lecturer so he can't be wrong.

Sid wins.

[Console]

At the end of Life, the Universe and Everything, the third book in the series, Arthur encounters a man named Prak, who through a significant overdose of a remarkably effective truth serum has gained the knowledge of all truth. Prak confirms that 42 is indeed the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, but reveals that it is impossible for both the ultimate answer and the ultimate question to be known about the same universe. He states that if such a thing should come to pass, the universe would disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. He then speculates that this may have already happened.

Meaning whatever questions were written in the book must be wrong, therefore the six times nine question is, by the fact that we know it, wrong.

I wins