IHOPE

 

 

The plays shown on the board do not score quite as much as E.T. wrote in his records of the game score:

E.T. (cumulative)	E.T. (scores)	Actual scores	Difference
30	30	26	4
67	37	22	15
120	53	32	21
140	20	13	7
179	39	27	12
200	21	20	1
229	29	10	19
252	23	22	1
292	40	36	4
305	13	12	1
333	28	15	13
367	34	15	19

The point differences spell DOUGLAS ADAMS alphanumerically. This, the Scrabble game, and the title of this puzzle interpreted as cryptic wordplay (IHOP + E) gives an association with a scene at the end of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. In this scene, Arthur Dent pulls letters from a makeshift Scrabble set out of the bag to spell out the (erroneous) question to the answer 42, "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"

Using the empty rack positions after each play and the comment about E.T.'s rack-filling custom to track the letters played, the order of E.T.'s letters can be determined as WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY NINE AND SUBTRACT ONE. Using the same bad multiplication result from the book, and normal subtraction, gives the answer, FORTY-ONE.