If humankind had one less finger, then we would go to 8 and then start over, and 10 would actually be 9, 100 would actually be 81, and 1000 would actually be 729. Your ten fingers are the reason that our number system goes to nine and starts over. Unless you've suffered a tragic accident, a perfectly acceptable birth defect, or have polydactly (lucky you!), then the answer is 10. If that explanation is still unclear, then please read on.Ĭount the number of fingers you have. If you know what binary is, then base thirteen is to thirteen symols as binary is to two symols. Now - what IS base thirteen? What the heck does that MEAN? Well, it's easy. So sorry to all those brilliant mathematicians who adore Adams and look a little too deeply into his meaning, but there it is in the documentary as plain as it ever will be, and we'll just have to accept it and move on. It's all over the internet and often scrawled in the margins of library copies of the original book. 'I don't,' he explains in the special features of the BBC series DVD, 'Make jokes in base thirteen.' Adams chose 42 because it was the funniest number. Douglas Adams announced in a television interview that he did not intend this joke. This is a very intelligent and insightful thing to do and is exactly the sort of thing that Douglas Adams WOULD have intended (just read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency if you wonder where that thought is grounded). In the case of the Question, these very smart people discovered that if they counted using thirteen single-digits instead of the ten that we're used to (explained below), then suddenly 6 x 9 does in fact equal 42. Some very smart readers of the original story took this joke a little too far, and inferred that they would have to bend the conventional definitions of math in order to understand Adams's meaning.

Arthur explains upon hearing this that he always felt there was some fundamental flaw in the universe.

In the story, Arthur and Ford discover (inconclusively) that the question is 'What is six times nine,' which is 54. Here is where to begin:įans of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will know that the answer to the question about life, the universe, and everything is forty two. This entry explains the meaning of life, the universe, and everything as only Douglas Adams can (straight from the horse's mouth, in fact!), and also teaches you how to use some of those funny looking symbols on your digital calculators. Read on to find out more about the whole situation. Here you will read about a popular alternate theory and where and how Douglas Adams explained that it is very smart but not what he had had in mind. 42 is a special number because it is the funniest of all numbers.

Douglas adams answer to life