Obviously the article is written for fun, but for those interested Douglas Adams' answer to why 42 was:
"The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story."
While I do agree that the amount of speculation over such a simple joke is a little ridiculous, Douglas Adams' actual thought process doesn't invalidate the alternatives as valid interpretations of the text. While Adams may have had no particular question in mind when he wrote the joke, it is nonetheless a key point of the story that there is such a question, and as such it is to be expected that some people's interpretations of the story will include one.
Now personally, I would argue that the actual question is unknowable, and that this is central to the point of the story, but this is just my opinion.
"The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story."