How long is a piece of string?
This is a good question. If you’re in the market for string you can buy it in many places. DIY store B&Q has 60 metres of cotton twine for sale. Their natural garden twine comes in at 50 metres. Mosey on down to supermarket chain Sainsbury’s and you’ll get general purpose string, although somewhat shorter at 40 metres. Other products and stores are available of course. “Caveat emptor” if your string comes up short.
The literal answer is one route, but there are others too. The witty road could lead us here: Question — “how long is a piece of string?” Answer — “it’s twice as long as half its length.” Or the philosophical path might encourage this: “How long is a piece of string?” Answer: “As long as you want it to be, since you are the master of your own destiny.”
This question about string would sit comfortably in the pages of the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. One of the book’s stories goes like this: a group of “hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings” demanded that supercomputer Deep Thought must tell them the “answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.”
Deep Thought took a while to check — 7.5 million years to be precise. When it eventually came back with the answer, the hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings were quite cross. The answer to the ultimate question? That was 42. Now these beings had…
