A partly lifted silver serving cloche revealing a blank card, beside a small brass bell and a curled paper strip on burgundy.

Original artwork, not a still

Life, the Universe and Everything · 1982

Douglas Adams

Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The speaker jokes that figures on a restaurant bill obey their own peculiar arithmetic, unlike numbers anywhere else in the universe. The grand, scientific phrasing makes the familiar puzzlement over a bill's total sound like a breach of natural law.

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