The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Book Quiz

1. Why is Arthur Dent's house demolished at the start? — To make way for a bypass - a plan that has been on display in a cellar with no stairs for months. The council's plans were 'on display' in a locked cellar with no stairs and no lights - and minutes later the same logic, scaled up, demolishes the whole planet for a hyperspace bypass.
2. What is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything? — 42. The supercomputer Deep Thought gives the answer after seven and a half million years - and admits it doesn't know the question. Earth is then built as an even bigger computer to work out what 42 is the answer to.
3. How good is Vogon poetry? — The third worst in the Universe. The worst is written by a Krikkit robot on a strangled megafreighter - and Earth's Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge takes fourth, a real person Adams later had to apologize to (the name was real; the poet's wasn't).
4. What does the Babel fish prove, according to the book? — That God does not exist - by a logical argument God vanishes in a puff of smoke. The leech-like translator fish is so wildly improbable that its existence disproves God: 'proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' God promptly vanishes. 'Oh, that was easy,' says Man - and proves black is white, then gets killed at the next zebra crossing.
5. What job does Zaphod Beeblebrox hold? — President of the Galaxy - a figurehead role designed to draw attention away from where power actually sits. Two heads, one ego: Zaphod took the job precisely because it involves no power - his 'responsibility to protect' is to be spectacularly distracting, which is the book's cleanest joke about politics.
6. Why does a towel matter to a hitchhiker? — A towel is 'about the most massively useful thing' - and carrying one signals you are a hoopy frood who really knows where it is. The Guide's towel entry is the book's most-quoted passage outside 42 - and gave the world Towel Day (May 25th), the fan holiday held every year since Adams's death in 2001.
7. What did Slartibartfast win an award for? — Designing Norway's fjords on the planet-building floor of Magrathea. The elderly coastline designer is quietly proud of the fjords ('I won an award for Norway') and bitter about Earth Mk II being cancelled - 'you're always building and never learning'.
8. What do the mice actually want from Arthur? — His brain - to extract the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything that has been living in it for ten million years. The mice funded Earth; with the experiment destroyed five minutes before completion, the organic computer's last readout - Arthur's brain - is the only backup of the Question. They offer to replace it, and are very reasonable about the alternatives.

Eight multiple-choice questions covering Douglas Adams's plot, characters and most famous moments. The quiz takes about two minutes and your score is instant.

Yes — no signup, no email, nothing to install. Answer the eight questions and get your score immediately.

8/8 means you know the book cold; 6+ is a solid score. Below 4, the book is calling you back for a reread.

Easy - a weekend book by design. The humor runs on digression and deadpan, so readers who need plot momentum may bounce off; readers who enjoy British comic timing finish it in a day and immediately start quoting it. The questions themselves stick to famous, load-bearing moments — the scenes and lines the book is remembered for — so a genuine read usually scores 6+.

About 46,500 words — roughly 216 pages, or about 3 hours and 15 minutes at an average pace. The full pace breakdown is in how long it takes to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It runs 35 chapters, averaging 1,328 words each; see the book-count guide for its full structure.