Title text:
In 1899, people were walking around shouting '23' at each other and laughing, and confused reporters were writing articles trying to figure out what it meant.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3184/
Yeah I remember that, saying 42 is the answer to everything was what I called nonsense, as I could just as easily say 42 meaning everything is is the product you get from, 6 7 (meaning nothing). Poof, now everything is a multiple of nothing, and at the end of the day none of it made any sense or had any meaning
Funny enough, there's a point in a later book in the series where they suggest the "ultimate question'" that 42 is an answer to could be "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"
Which works in base 13!
Im 93% sure that 6*9 doesnt equal 42 in base 6227020800
which, when a mathemagician occasionally asked adams about it, he would respond along the lines of "oh fuck"