42 Puzzle

The 42 Puzzle is a game devised by Douglas Adams in 1994 for his popular The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. In the books, 42 is known as The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything that Deep Thought, a sophisticated computer constructed by pandimensional beings, returns (after seven-and-a-half million years of calculating). Referencing this, he created a puzzle whose question was unknown, but whose answer is already known to be 42.

Related Topics:
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - 42 - The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything - Deep Thought

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The puzzle is an illustration consisting of 42 multi-coloured balls, in 7 columns and 6 rows. According to Douglas Adams (in an interview reprinted at Douglas Adams Continuum), "Everybody was looking for hidden meanings and puzzles and significances in what I had written (like 'is it significant that 6 * 9 is 42 in base 13?'. As if.) So I thought that just for a change I would actually construct a puzzle and see how many people solved. Of course, nobody paid it any attention. I think that's terribly significant."

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The puzzle first appeared in The Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was later incorporated into the covers of all five reprinted "Hitchhiker's" novels.

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