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42 Puzzle
The 42 Puzzle is a game devised by Douglas Adams in 1994 for the United States series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books.
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The number 42
In the series, 42 is known as The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Deep Thought, a sophisticated computer constructed by hyper-intelligent, pandimensional beings (mice), gave the answer after seven-and-a-half million years of calculating.
The puzzle
The puzzle is an illustration consisting of 42 multi-coloured balls, in 7 columns and 6 rows. Douglas Adams has said,
| “ | 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 it. Of course, nobody paid it any attention. I think that's terribly significant."[1] | ” |
In the puzzle the question is unknown, but the answer is already known to be 42.
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 in the United States.
Questions to the Puzzle
Six of the solutions are:[2]
| How many spheres are in the diagram? (six rows of seven is 42) | What position in the grid does the computer that calculates the Question to the Ultimate Answer (the Earth) occupy? (42) | The barcode is the number 42 as an Interleaved 2 of 5 barcode |
| Considering red-hued spheres (red, purple, orange, black) as a '1' and those without as a '0', what number does each line represent in decimal form? (In binary, each line reads '0101010', or '42' in decimal form.) | What number do the blue-tinted spheres (blue, green, purple, black) spell out? (Similar to a color blindness test.) (42) | What number is represented by Roman numerals spelled out by the yellow-tinted spheres (yellow, orange, green, black) in the first three rows? (XLII = 42) |
References
- ^ Cool questions and answers with Douglas Adams. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
- ^ 4.8 Probable Solution to the Ill Guide Puzzle (Douglas Adams). Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
See also
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