Timeline for Did Douglas Adams say "I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe."?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 7, 2021 at 13:07 | comment | added | Darrel Hoffman | @Pendantry Right you are - in my mind it was "six and nine" not "six by nine". I stand corrected. | |
| Sep 5, 2021 at 14:36 | comment | added | Pendantry | @DarrelHoffman Intriguing... that's the second time today I've seen someone claim that the sentence "what do You get if You multiplY six bY nine" contains three instances of the letter 'y'. Either it clearly has four, or else there's something fundamentally wrong with the Universe. Or mine, at least. | |
| Feb 19, 2021 at 13:54 | comment | added | Darrel Hoffman | @IMSoP Yeah, there basically is no official canon in the HHG universe. Between the radio series, the books, the TV series, the video game, and the film (all of which Adams was personally involved in writing even if he didn't survive to see the film), there are so many discrepancies it's impossible to reconcile them. (And there's apparently a new series coming out next year? Hmm...) | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 22:18 | comment | added | IMSoP | @DanielRoseman I stand corrected! | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 19:19 | comment | added | Daniel Roseman | @IMSoP well actually, going back to the point made in the answer, the versions differ and in the radio series it's an actual pocket Scrabble set Arthur had been carrying all along (he mentioned he had it in the Haggunennon ship). | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 16:15 | comment | added | IMSoP | @DarrelHoffman If you want a head-canon excuse, remember that this is a home-made Scrabble set, made while stranded in the pre-historic past. It's fairly unlikely that either Ford or Arthur would happen to have the correct letter distributions memorised. | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 14:20 | comment | added | Darrel Hoffman | Also worth noting that these letters come from a Scrabble set, but breaks the rules, since a Scrabble set only has 2 Y's, and this sentence requires 3. I don't know if this was intentional or falls into the same category as "I don't write jokes in base-13" (His actual response when someone told him that 6x9 does indeed equal 42 in base-13.) | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 5:55 | comment | added | N. Virgo | @DanielS.Fowler I'm fairly certain that Arthur says the same thing (probably the "I always said..." version) in the TV show as well. That seems to be the case from the script here. But then this isn't so surprising, as large sections of the TV show scripts are identical to the radio scripts they were based on. | |
| Feb 17, 2021 at 16:31 | vote | accept | Daniel S. Fowler | ||
| Feb 17, 2021 at 16:31 | comment | added | Daniel S. Fowler | Thanks, I have now found a transcript (clivebanks.co.uk/THHGTTG/THHGTTGradio6.htm) of the last episode of the first Hitchhikers radio show (12th April 1978) with the line by Arthur "That’s it. Six by nine…forty-two! I always said there was something fundamentally wrong about the universe!". Nice to know it definitively comes from Adams | |
| Feb 17, 2021 at 16:23 | history | answered | Daniel Roseman | CC BY-SA 4.0 |