[tomweingarten]

When I was in middle school I was sure I had cracked the meaning behind 42. I sent Douglas Adams a letter telling him how much I appreciated the books and laying out in detail how the alphanumeric values of each major character's name related to 42.

He wrote back an exceedingly kind hand-written postcard informing me that he appreciated my curiosity but that there was, in fact, no deeper meaning to 42 other than it was a nice-sounding number.