*hypf*

A fellow student unearthed the following /. signature:

„Anyone else notice what x+k+c+d adds to? 42! :) [x=24,k=11,c=­3,d=4]“

Interesting discovery. I wonder whether that was intentional. And it goes on: When adding up ASCII representation values of the characters you get 120 + 107 + 9­9 + 100 = 426 which includes 42 as a substring.

Said fellow student then discovered even more similarities between those two numbers:

<sh> sebastian@madlax:~$ factor 426
<sh> 426: 2 3 71
<sh> sebastian@madlax:~$ factor 42
<sh> 42: 2 3 7
<sh> This is a *bit* creepy for a coincidence.

So both numbers are even sphenic numbers and the prime factors of 42 are a substring of the prime factors of 426.

Scary. So xkcd seems to be linked to 42.