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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has become so popular among sci-fi and computer enthusiasts that certain phrases from it are widely recognised and often used in reference to, but outside the context of, the source material.

Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything (42)

In the first novel/radio series, a group of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. Unfortunately, The Ultimate Question itself is unknown. When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, the computer says that it cannot; however, it can help design an even more powerful computer (the Earth) that can. The programmers then embark on a further ten-million-year program to discover The Ultimate Question. This new computer will incorporate living beings in the "computational matrix", with the pan-dimensional creators assuming the form of mice. The process that is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans and then ruined completely, five minutes before completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons to make way for a new Hyperspace Bypass. This is later revealed to have been a ruse: the Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of psychiatrists, led by Gag Halfrunt, who feared for the loss of their careers when the meaning of life became known.¹

Lacking a real question, the mice decide not to go through the whole thing again and simply invent a fake Question ("How many roads must a man walk down?" from Bob Dylan's protest song "Blowin' in the Wind") for the "5-D chat show and lecture circuit".

At the end of the first radio series (and television series, and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe book) Arthur Dent, having escaped the Earth's destruction, potentially has some of the computational matrix in his brain. He attempts to discover The Ultimate Question by extracting it from his brainwave patterns, as abusively² suggested by Marvin the Paranoid Android, when a Scrabble-playing caveman spells out FORTY TWO. Arthur pulls random letters from a bag, but only gets the sentence "WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY NINE?"

This 'question' is impossible with a standard set of Scrabble, which contains only two Ys. In the TV series³ and book,¹ the set has been handmade from Arthur's memory; in the radio series Arthur has a "pocket Scrabble set" at Milliways.⁴

The program on the "Earth computer" should have run correctly, but the unexpected arrival of the Golgafrinchans on prehistoric Earth caused input errors into the system - computing (because of the garbage in, garbage out rule) the wrong question - the question in Arthur's subconscious being invalid all along.¹

The first two theories start the second novel (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) and are confirmed at the close of the third (Life, the Universe and Everything) where Arthur encounters Prak (played on radio's The Tertiary Phase by the actor who was Arthur Dent in the 1 May to 9 May 1979⁵ stage show"⁵). A Krikkit-robot caused a massive overdose of a truth serum to be accidentally administered to Prak, who was then sworn to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" which he did unstoppably. Prak confirms that 42 is indeed The Ultimate Answer, and confirms that it is impossible for both The Ultimate Answer and The Ultimate Question to be known about in the same universe (compare the uncertainty principle) as they will cancel each other out and take the Universe with them to be replaced by something even more bizarre (as described in the first theory) and that it may have already happened (as described in the second).⁶

The number 42

Douglas Adams was asked many times during his career why he chose the number 42. Many theories were proposed,⁷ but he rejected them all. On November 3, 1993, he gave an answer⁸ on alt.fan.douglas-adams:

Adams described his choice as "A completely ordinary number, a number not just divisible by two but also six and seven. In fact it's the sort of number that you could, without any fear, introduce to your parents."⁴

Despite this, there is evidence of other explanations. Some readers noticed that 6₁₃ × 9₁₃ = 42₁₃ (using base 13). Douglas Adams later joked about this observation, saying: "I may be a sorry case, but I don't write jokes in base 13."⁹ Whilst 42 was a number with no hidden meaning, Adams explained in more detail in an interview with Iain Johnstone of BBC Radio 4 (recorded in 1998 though never broadcast¹⁰) to celebrate the first radio broadcast's 20th anniversary. Having decided it should be a number, he tried to think what an "ordinary number" should be. He ruled out non-integers, then he remembered having worked as a "prop-borrower" for John Cleese on his Video Arts training videos.

Cleese needed a funny number for the punchline to a sketch involving a bank teller (himself) and a customer (Tim Brooke-Taylor). Adams believed that the number that Cleese came up with was 42 and he decided to use it.¹¹

In January 2000, in response to a panelist's "Where does the number 42 come from?" on the radio show "Book Club" Adams explained that he was "on his way to work one morning, whilst still writing the scene, and was thinking about what the actual answer should be. He eventually decided that it should be something that made no sense whatsoever- a number, and a mundane one at that. And that is how he arrived at the number 42, completely at random."^{citation needed}

Stephen Fry, a friend of Adams, claims that Adams told him "exactly why 42", and that the reason is¹³ "fascinating, extraordinary and, when you think hard about it, completely obvious." However, Fry says that he has vowed not to tell anyone the secret, and that it must go with him to the grave. John Lloyd, Adams' collaborator on The Meaning of Liff and two Hitchhikers fits, said that Douglas has called 42 "the funniest of the two-digit numbers."¹⁴

There is the persistent tale that forty-two is actually Adams' tribute to the indefatigable paperback book, and is really the average number of lines on an average page of an average paperback book.¹⁵

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. The puzzle is an illustration consisting of 42 multi-coloured balls, in 7 columns and 6 rows. Douglas Adams has said,

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.

Cultural references

If you type the answer to life the universe and everything (all lower case, no quotes) into Google, the Google Calculator will give you 42.

"Life, the Universe, and Everything" is a common name for the off-topic section of an Internet forum (especially LUE on GameFAQs), and the phrase is invoked in similar ways to mean "anything at all".

Don't Panic

Don't Panic is a phrase written on the cover of the The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy.¹⁸ The novel explains that this was partly because the device "looked insanely complicated" to operate, and partly to keep intergalactic travelers from, well, panicking.¹⁹

In the novel, it is said that despite its many glaring (and occasionally fatal) inaccuracies, the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy itself has outsold the Encyclopedia Galactica because it is slightly cheaper, and because it has the words "Don't Panic" in large, friendly letters on the cover.¹⁸

In the novel's typography, the words "DON'T PANIC" are always typeset in upper-case.

On the cover of the novel (in early U.S. editions), the words are often accompanied by the image of a round green figure with skinny arms, sticking out a bright red tongue, who also appeared on the 2005 edition of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This text also appeared on the covers of the Illustrated Editions of the first novel.

Much like "42" and "knowing where your towel is",²⁰ the words are sometimes used among fans of the books and radio series to show that they have this passion in common.^{citation needed}

Arthur C. Clarke said Douglas Adams' use of "don't panic" was perhaps the best advice that could be given to humanity.²¹

Knowing where one's towel is

Somebody who can stay in control of virtually any situation is somebody who is said to know where his or her towel is. Douglas Adams got the idea for this phrase when he went on holiday and found that his beach towel kept disappearing. On Towel Day, fans commemorate Douglas Adams by carrying towels with them.

Mostly Harmless

The only entry about Earth in the Guide used to be "Harmless", but Ford Prefect managed to change it a little before getting stuck on Earth. "Mostly Harmless" provoked a very upset reaction from Arthur when heard. (Those two words are not what Ford submitted as a result of his research — merely all that was left after his editors were done with it.) Its popularity is such that it has become the definition of Earth in many standard works of sci-fi reference, like The Star Trek Encyclopedia. Additionally, "Harmless" and "Mostly Harmless" both feature as ranks in the seminal computer game Elite.

In the MMORPG RuneScape "Mos Le'Harmless" is a island in the eastern sea. It is, however, anything but harmless, containing a pirate town and a jungle filled with monsters.

Not entirely unlike

In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur Dent tries to get a Nutrimatic dispenser to produce a cup of tea. Instead, it invariably produces a concoction (which most people found unpleasant) that is "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea". One of the primary goals of the player, as Arthur Dent, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy computer game, is to thwart the machine and find some decent tea, a mission that the player is constantly reminded of by the inventory item "no tea". According to the Jargon File, the briefer "not entirely unlike" has entered hacker jargon.²²

Share and Enjoy

In the radio version, this phrase had its own song (sung in Fit the Ninth), which was sung by a choir of robots during "special occasions". However, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation tends to produce inherently faulty goods, which makes the slogan ironic since few people would share or enjoy a product that does not function properly. Among the design flaws is the choir of robots that sings the song: they sing a flattened fifth out of tune with the accompaniment.

This phrase is often invoked in releasing freeware, shareware, or open source software, though without its ironic connotations.

The Guide relates that the words "Share and Enjoy" were displayed in illuminated letters three miles high near the Sirius Cybernetics Complaints Department, until their weight caused them to collapse through the underground offices of many young executives. The upper half of the sign that now protrudes translates in the local tongue as "Go stick your head in a pig", and is only lit up for special celebrations.

The "Share and Enjoy" tune is also used in the TV series as the backing for a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robot commercial (slogan: "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with").

So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish

In the book of the same title, "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish" is the last message from dolphins to humanity. Its popularity was such that it was the title of the opening song for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie.

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