It's entirely possible this has been addressed in one of the scads of novels or comic books (or even video games) based on Star Wars, but I had a brainstorm earlier today that could prove that Han's mistake of bragging about how fast his ship was in A New Hope was not, in fact, a mistake.
Much has been made of Han's faux pas by claiming his ship was so fast it made the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs. A parsec is a measurement of distance.
We all assume Han was incredibly ignorant (or thinking Ben and Luke were) by boasting about the speed of his ship by using a measurement of distance instead of time (what we'd expect), but what if distance was a more impressive measurement for that particular run?
Let's say it's a very dangerous trip, and pilots normally have to take a longer route to avoid asteroids or gravity wells or black holes or whatever, and Han's reckless (combining skill and his usual luck) piloting allowed him to turn it into a shorter one. Maybe he skirted one or multiple dangers more closely than his contemporaries did, and that's why it's an impressive feat.
How about that, hunh? Genius.
You know, back in The Day at Marvel Comics, when a fan explained a mistake away like that, he got a No Prize (which is exactly what it was, a "no prize"-- other than it was mentioned in the letter column). Maybe I should get an honorary No Prize for this...
Oh, goddammit!
My genius has again been bested. As I searched to verify it was twelve parsecs before I hit "publish post", I ran across this website: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run.
So much for cementing my own little place in Star Wars geekdom...
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