I'm sorry, but every time I hear the "avoiding The Maw" explanation for "less than 12 parsecs" I somehow boil with rage. I'm not even a huge Star Wars fan, either. But I simply do not get why fans cannot just accept that Han Solo is mindlessly bragging. It even says so in versions of the script. It doesn't need a complicated explanation- it's that simple: Han Solo wants to make his ship sound fast so he throws meaningless words up into the air.

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You can't really tell the difference between drunken rambling and sober blogging.

I think we are missing the obvious here: it's a MacGuffin. That's why, for me, it doesn't matter what it means, so long as I know it means something in that world.