Okay so I've been rereading Restaurant at the End of the Universe and of course ford and Arthur are trying to puzzle out the ultimate question. Marvin says its imprinted in arthur's brainwaves, but since arthur is descended from the Golgafrinchans (telephone sanitizers, hairdressers, etc) and not the original neanderthals, Ford says it was probably a distorted form of the Question.

So why, when they do the mess with the Scrabble, do they not consider that the 'nine' is a distortion of 'seven'? Or do they and i need to reread life, the universe, and everything as well? (problematic because I don't have a copyxD )