In the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...........?

Question

someone on here wrote

The closest the author ever comes is from a faulty output which reads, "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"

what does that mean?

Answer 1

"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer." -- Zaphod Beeblebrox

Answer 2

In The Hitchiker's Guide, the "Ultimate Answer" (philosophically) to the Ultimate Question is computed by a vast supercomputer.  The answer is "42."

However, the programmers neglected to specify that they needed to know the question that the ultimate answer fits... which is apparently harder to reach than the answer itself is.

The question is never resolved, because the super-supercomputer designed to search for it (Earth) is destroyed seconds befor it would have been found.  The closest we ever get (after it's discovered that the computer itself was damaged from bad input  - alien bureaucrats and other useless functionaries) is "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?"  (Which is, of course, 54, not 42.)  Therefore there is no answer.

Some people apparently take HGTTG as an actual philosophical handbook, and expect REAL answers from it.  These people are nutters.

"42" is also commonly the answer given by Y/A answerers when some total NOOB comes to the Philosophy section to ask "What is the meaning of life?" as if we've solved that on here recently.

Answer 3

Closest connection within the book that the universal answer of everything is 42 -- I would speculate.  Then again, we are trying to make sense of some British humor on a work of fantasy and fictitious story. It was also speculated that the binary number 101010 is significant to the reason why 42 was chosen by the author.