[bellyfullofbac]

3rd reply (4th item in the thread) from the man himself:

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.fan.douglas-adams/c/595nPukE...

> The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story.

[xhedley]

I was hypothesising the subconscious reason why Douglas Adams would think "42 will do". I find 42 funny for the conscious reasons I stated.

It's perfectly possible this did not apply to Douglas Adams. But a hypothesis around "eek I didn't do my homework but I winged it" seemed plausible for him.