118 Fun Facts About Joke

The oldest known joke, toilet humour from about 1900 BC, comes from which civilisation?

Sumerian: the proverb claims one thing has never happened since time immemorial, a young woman not breaking wind in her husband's lap; Egypt's oldest known joke is some 300 years younger.

The Westcar Papyrus, home to one of the oldest recorded jokes, shares a museum with Nefertiti's bust in which city?

Berlin's museum received the scroll in 1886, bought from the son of Karl Richard Lepsius, who said a niece of the traveller Henry Westcar gave it to him and who kept it in his attic.

What does the title of the Philogelos, the oldest surviving joke book, mean in Greek?

Laughter-Lover is the usual English title; many of its 260-odd jokes feel strikingly modern, with an absent-minded scholar as a favourite butt.

A Philogelos joke about a complaint over a newly bought slave is called an ancestor of which Monty Python sketch?

In the Philogelos a buyer complains that his new slave has died, and the seller protests that with him 'he never did any such thing', much as the Dead Parrot's shopkeeper insists the bird is pining for the fjords.

An Egyptian joke from about 1600 BC suggests entertaining a bored pharaoh with a boatload of women dressed only in what?

Nets: the gag retells a tale from the Westcar Papyrus, in which a bored King Sneferu is advised to have the young women of his palace row him across a lake.

Which psychoanalyst published Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious in 1905?

Sigmund Freud argued that a joke lets a forbidden thought slip past our inhibitions, and he compared the way jokes work with the dream-work he had described a few years earlier.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman ran LaughLab, an online hunt for the world's funniest joke, from a university in which country?

United Kingdom: Wiseman was based at the University of Hertfordshire. The site drew some 40,000 jokes, and the winner had a hunter, told to make sure his friend is dead, firing a shot.

LaughLab's winning joke was later traced to a 1951 Goons sketch thought to have been written by whom?

Spike Milligan's daughter said he had very likely written it: in the 1951 BBC clip one man asks whether a body is dead, another goes to make sure, and two shots ring out.

The cry 'Knock, knock, who's there' is sometimes traced to a drunken porter's speech in which Shakespeare play?

Macbeth's porter, roused by knocking just after Duncan's murder, plays gatekeeper of hell and cries 'Knock, knock! Who's there?' as he lets in one imaginary sinner after another.

The riddle about a chicken crossing the road was printed in 1847 in The Knickerbocker, a magazine from which city?

New York's Knickerbocker, a literary monthly, printed the chicken riddle in 1847 as a conundrum whose flat answer, 'to get to the other side', is the whole joke.

In 'Who's on First?', which player is the pitcher?

Tomorrow is the pitcher and Today the catcher. The routine never names a right fielder, and the shortstop, I Don't Give a Darn, turns up only in its closing lines.

Which duo's 'Who's on First?' gold record entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1956?

Abbott and Costello's gold record of the routine went to Cooperstown in 1956, and the Hall plays the version they filmed for the 1945 comedy The Naughty Nineties.

Gilbert Gottfried told 'The Aristocrats' joke at a Friars Club roast of whom, weeks after 9/11?

Hugh Hefner's Friars Club roast came weeks after 9/11; when a joke about the attacks drew hisses and a shout of 'too soon', Gottfried dropped his script and won the room back with The Aristocrats.

Which magician-comedian made the 2005 documentary The Aristocrats with fellow comic Paul Provenza?

Penn Jillette, the talking half of Penn & Teller, conceived and produced The Aristocrats with Paul Provenza, building a whole film out of comedians telling their own versions of one filthy joke.

Which term for a corny pun did Merriam-Webster add in September 2019?

Dad joke reached Merriam-Webster in September 2019, but the label is older: a 1987 Gettysburg Times column begged readers to preserve and revere 'Dad' jokes, not ban them.

Why does the psychiatrist lightbulb joke need only one psychiatrist?

The psychiatrist lightbulb joke's answer is that the bulb has to really want to change, a dig at talk therapy's reliance on the patient's own motivation.

The bang in a Christmas cracker comes from a card strip coated with a fulminate of which precious metal?

Silver fulminate is so sensitive to friction that pulling the cracker's card strip sets it off; tradition says Tom Smith added the snap after hearing a log crackle on his fire.

Which 1930s prank toy from a Toronto rubber company did S. S. Adams reject as indelicate?

The whoopee cushion struck Adams as too indelicate to sell, so its makers took it elsewhere; once sales took off, he brought out his own copy, the Razzberry Cushion.

On April Fools' Day 1957, BBC's Panorama showed Swiss farmers harvesting what?

Panorama's three-minute film showed a Ticino family pulling spaghetti from trees, narrated by Richard Dimbleby; hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC asking how to grow their own.

'Take my wife... please' is the signature line of which King of the One-Liners?

Henny Youngman said the line began as a sincere request: at a radio show he asked someone to show his wife to her seat, and it was taken as a joke.

'I don't get no respect!' was the catchphrase of which comedian?

Rodney Dangerfield gave up show business as a young man and sold aluminum siding for years, then returned in his forties and built a whole act on 'I don't get no respect'.

Which 1980 comedy cast the 'no respect' comic as the loudmouth Al Czervik?

Caddyshack came out when the comic was 58 and led to starring film roles; born Jacob Cohen, he had worked as Jack Roy until a club owner gave him the stage name that stuck.

An old joke told so often that it has gone stale is known as an old what?

Chestnut may come from an 1816 play, The Broken Sword, in which a man retelling a story about a cork tree is cut off: he has told it 27 times, and the tree was a chestnut.

Bazooka Joe, the bubble-gum comic-strip hero, is instantly recognisable by what?

Bazooka Joe wears a black eyepatch; Topps dropped the comic strips from the gum wrappers in 2012, replacing them with puzzles and codes.

Which British humour magazine, founded in 1841, gave 'cartoon' its modern comic-drawing meaning?

Punch ran John Leech's 'Cartoon, No. 1' in 1843, mocking the grand preparatory 'cartoons' submitted for the new Houses of Parliament murals, and the comic sense of the word stuck.

A jester's marotte, or bauble, parodied which royal object?

The sceptre was the model for the marotte, a stick topped with a carved head often dressed like its owner; with a cap and bells for his crown, the jester played a mock king.

Court jester Will Sommers cracked jokes for which English king?

Henry VIII's fool Will Sommers outlasted his master, keeping his place at court under Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I and making his last public appearance at Elizabeth's coronation.

In Monty Python's 'The Funniest Joke in the World', what happens to Ernest Scribbler when he finishes writing it?

He dies laughing the moment he reads his own joke back; the British Army then turns it into a weapon, giving each translator a single word to handle for safety.

The first show in the Comedy Central Roast series, in August 2003, targeted which comedian?

Denis Leary was the first target, in a special made by his own company, Apostle; until then the channel had spent five years televising the Friars Club's roasts instead.

Whose 2011 Comedy Central Roast drew 6.4 million viewers, the most ever for one of the channel's roasts?

Charlie Sheen's roast aired on September 19, 2011, an hour after his replacement made his debut on Two and a Half Men, and its 6.4 million viewers were never matched by a later roast.

In France and Italy, someone pranked on 1 April is an April what?

The French poisson d'avril and Italian pesce d'aprile both mean 'April fish'; the traditional prank is sticking a paper fish on the victim's back.

A disputed early link between 1 April and foolishness appears in which 14th-century English work?

The Canterbury Tales has a fox trick the cock Chauntecleer 'thritty dayes and two' after March began, read by some as 1 April; scholars now suspect a copying slip for a date in May.

In a 1996 April Fools' Day hoax, which fast-food chain claimed it had bought a famous Philadelphia landmark?

Taco Bell took out newspaper ads saying it had bought the Liberty Bell to help cut the national debt; the White House joked back that the Lincoln Memorial was becoming the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial.

Classic elephant joke: why did the elephant paint its toenails red?

So it could hide in a cherry tree: the gag runs flawless logic on an absurd premise, a formula so easy to copy that millions of people made up their own elephant jokes in the 1960s fad.

The earliest lightbulb jokes, popular in the late 1960s and 1970s, mostly mocked which group?

Poles were the butt of the earliest lightbulb jokes, part of that era's wave of 'Polish jokes'; the format outlived the fad because any trade or group could be swapped in as the target.

'Chuck Norris facts' began on Something Awful in 2005 as jokes about which other action star?

The Vin Diesel Facts thread on Something Awful, riffing on his 2005 film The Pacifier, came first; the forum moved the format over to Chuck Norris later in 2005.

Which comedian made the 'In Soviet Russia...' reversal joke format famous in the 1980s?

Yakov Smirnoff, who left Odessa for America in 1977, is the comic most tied to the format, thanks to lines like his 1985 Miller Lite ad: 'In Russia, Party always finds you.'

An early 'In Soviet Russia' reversal joke appears in the 1938 musical Leave It to Me!, by which songwriter?

Cole Porter's 1938 musical Leave It to Me! has the line 'In Soviet Russia, messenger tips you', decades before an émigré stand-up turned the reversal into a catchphrase.

On which host's show did Norm Macdonald tell his marathon 'moth joke' in 2009?

Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show was where Norm Macdonald told the moth joke in 2009, stretching a gag he had heard told in 20 seconds into a long, Kafkaesque tale of the moth's family miseries.

A long, meandering joke that ends in a deliberate anticlimax is known as what kind of story?

Shaggy dog stories are named after a much-told tale about an uncommonly shaggy dog; in one version it wins ever-bigger contests until a final judge shrugs that it isn't so shaggy.

The novelty glasses with a big nose, bushy eyebrows and moustache caricature which comedian?

Groucho Marx's own moustache and eyebrows were fakes too: thick greasepaint he began smearing on in vaudeville instead of gluing on a false moustache, and kept for the films.

Prank tycoon S. S. Adams launched his novelty company with which product?

Sneezing powder made his name: as a dye salesman Adams noticed one product set workers sneezing, extracted the culprit and sold it as Cachoo, starting a national craze.

Which prank device did novelty maker S. S. Adams patent in 1932?

The joy buzzer hides in the palm and jolts a handshake, yet carries no current: a wound spring simply unwinds and vibrates, whatever the adverts claimed about electric shocks.

Which sound engineer built the padlocked 'laff box' that supplied sitcoms' canned laughter?

Charles Douglass, a CBS sound engineer, kept his laff box padlocked so that only his family saw inside; many of its laughs were lifted from pantomime sketches on The Red Skelton Show.

Which sitcom's producers won the right to leave the laugh track off some of its scenes?

M*A*S*H's producers, led by Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds, got CBS to leave the laugh track off the operating-room scenes; Gelbart loathed the practice altogether.

Which UK television channel presented the Funniest Joke of the Fringe award at Edinburgh from 2008?

Dave, UKTV's comedy channel, had critics shortlist the gags and 2,000 members of the public pick the winner; renamed U&Dave, it shelved the award in 2025.

The 2016 Fringe's funniest joke ends 'He's a man after my own heart' after Dad suggests registering for what?

Donor card: Masai Graham's winning gag ran 'My dad has suggested that I register for a donor card', twisting a fond idiom into a hint that Dad wants his organs.

The Onion, 'America's Finest News Source', was founded in 1988 as a weekly print paper in which city?

Madison students Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson launched The Onion in August 1988, paying for it with coupon ads for local eateries, and sold it a year later for under $20,000.

Which Muppet stand-up comic ends every gag with 'Wocka wocka!'?

Fozzie Bear, the Muppets' pork-pie-hatted stand-up, punctuates his gags with 'Wocka wocka!' while Statler and Waldorf heckle from the balcony; Frank Oz originated the character.

Which candy prints a short question-and-answer joke on every wrapper?

Laffy Taffy mixes puns its makers find with jokes sent in by fans; a 2022 contest drew more than 6,500 entries, and the best 101 joined the wrapper pool.

World Laughter Day, held on the first Sunday of May, was first celebrated in 1998 in which city?

Mumbai is where Dr Madan Kataria started his first laughter club in 1995 with a few friends in a park; when they ran out of jokes, he devised exercises for laughing without any.

In linguistics, a pun is also known by which term?

Paronomasia is the rhetorical name for punning; Shakespeare did it even at deathbeds, having the stabbed Mercutio promise that by the next day he will be 'a grave man'.

The Ig Nobel Prizes honour research that 'first makes people laugh, and then makes them' do what?

The Ig Nobels, launched by Marc Abrahams in 1991, honour work that makes people laugh and then think; Andre Geim won one in 2000 for levitating a frog and a real Nobel in 2010.

Which Czech-born novelist's 1967 debut, The Joke, follows a student expelled over a postcard praising Trotsky?

Milan Kundera drew on his own expulsion from the Communist Party for The Joke; after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, the novel was banned at home.

Which comedian's Texaco Star Theater, launched in 1948, made him American television's first major star?

Milton Berle became 'Mr. Television' as sales of sets soared; 'Uncle Miltie' stuck after he ad-libbed to children in 1949 to listen to their Uncle Miltie and go to bed.

The set-up 'You might be a redneck if' is the signature line of which comedian?

Jeff Foxworthy's 1993 album You Might Be a Redneck If… sold more than three million copies and started a fad; 'Here's your sign' belongs to his touring partner Bill Engvall.

The 'ba-dum-tss' drum hit that punctuates a corny punchline is known in percussion jargon as a what?

Sting is the drummers' word for the 'ba-dum-tss'; many people call it a rimshot, but that is strictly a single stroke on rim and head together, and some stings have none.

Which term names a pun that hinges on the adverb after 'said', as in 'said loftily'?

A Tom Swifty mocks the Tom Swift boys' books, whose ghostwriters avoided a plain 'said'; a 1963 collection, Tom Swifties, turned the form into a national craze.

Which stand-up club opened in 1972 at Ciro's old Sunset Strip address?

The Comedy Store paid its comics no salary until they went on strike in 1979; David Letterman joined the picket line after his first night guest-hosting The Tonight Show.

Comic Relief was founded in 1985 by Lenny Henry and which screenwriter?

Screenwriter Richard Curtis founded Comic Relief with Lenny Henry in 1985, launching it live from a Sudanese refugee camp on Christmas Day; the first Red Nose Day in 1988 raised £15 million.

Just for Laughs, long the world's largest international comedy festival, was founded in which city?

Montreal has hosted Just for Laughs since Gilbert Rozon founded it in the early 1980s; when its owner cancelled the 2024 festival and sought creditor protection, Quebec rival ComediHa! bought the brand and revived it.

The Facetiae, a hit joke book first printed in 1470, was written by a papal secretary in which language?

Latin, as pure as he could make it, was Poggio Bracciolini's choice for his bawdy tales, flatulence jokes included; the first printed joke book ran to some twenty editions before 1500.

Which Roman's pun on 'tertia deducta' mocked Caesar for selling Servilia land cheaply?

Cicero's quip, recorded by Suetonius, turned 'tertia deducta' into a double meaning: a third off the price, and Servilia's daughter Tertia 'brought in' to Caesar.

Which comedian's routine about seven words banned from television led to a 1978 US Supreme Court ruling?

George Carlin's monologue went out on a radio station one afternoon in 1973; a father who heard it with his son complained, and the Court ruled 5-4 that such broadcasts could be restricted.

Which theory of humour says we laugh when something violates our expectations?

Incongruity theory is now the leading account: Kant called laughter what happens when a strained expectation suddenly turns into nothing, which is how a punchline works.

The 'funny bone' may owe its name to a pun on which arm bone?

Humerus sounds like 'humorous', which may be why the spot is called the funny bone; the tingle itself comes from the ulnar nerve, pressed against that bone at the elbow.

Which naturalist published an early detailed description of laughter in an 1872 book on emotions?

Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals called laughter the purest expression of joy, and noted that young chimpanzees make a laughing noise too.

In a comedy double act, the partner who feeds the lines and stays serious is called the what?

Straight man was the prized job in vaudeville: his name usually came first on the bill and he often took the larger share of the pay, to keep him loyal to the laugh-getter.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the skull the prince lifts from a grave belonged to which court jester?

Yorick had carried the boy Hamlet on his back, and the sight of his skull sets the prince brooding on death.

A bait-and-switch internet prank sends clickers to the 1987 video of 'Never Gonna Give You Up' by which singer?

Rick Astley saw his career revived by the prank, which grew out of an earlier 4chan trick known as duckrolling.

Which fast-food chain's 1998 April Fools' ad announced a sandwich redesigned for left-handed customers?

Burger King claimed its Left-Handed Whopper had every condiment rotated 180 degrees to suit southpaws.

Which Google service launched on 1 April 2004 with so much free storage that many took it for a prank?

Gmail promised a full gigabyte when other webmail offered 4 megabytes or less, so it read like one of Google's hoaxes.

Which style of physical comedy is named after a two-slat wooden paddle that faked loud blows on stage?

Slapstick comes from the Italian batacchio of commedia dell'arte, whose slats cracked together loudly while barely touching the actor being hit.

Which silent-film star's unchanging deadpan expression earned him the nickname 'The Great Stone Face'?

Buster Keaton adopted the look as a child in his family's stage act, after noticing that audiences laughed less when he laughed himself.

Which gap-toothed, jug-eared cover boy has been the mascot of the humour magazine Mad since the 1950s?

Alfred E. Neuman is older than the magazine: his grinning face goes back to 19th-century advertisements for painless dentistry.

Which actor co-created and hosted Punk'd, the MTV hidden-camera show that pranked celebrities from 2003?

Ashton Kutcher first planned a show pranking ordinary people, until a fake dead body stunt in a Las Vegas hotel drew a $10 million lawsuit.

Edward Lear's A Book of Nonsense (1846) popularised which comic verse form, though Lear never used the name?

Limerick is generally taken to refer to the Irish city or county, perhaps through a parlour-game refrain inviting singers there.

Which animals give ultrasonic 'laughter' chirps when tickled, as neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp showed?

Rats even have 'tickle skin', patches that draw more of the 50-kHz chirps than others, and they make the same calls in rough-and-tumble play.

In The Simpsons, Bart's prank phone calls asking for people with rude pun names torment which Springfield character?

Moe Szyslak falls for it by calling each gag name out across his tavern, turning it into an insult or an innuendo.

Which pair of elderly Muppets heckle every act from a theatre balcony box on The Muppet Show?

Statler and Waldorf take their names from two landmark hotels, the Statler Hilton and the Waldorf-Astoria.

The 'dihydrogen monoxide' prank urges people to ban which everyday substance under its chemical name?

Water was the target when a 14-year-old's 1997 science project gathered petitions to ban it, under the title How Gullible Are We?

Australians scare tourists with tall tales of the 'drop bear', a predatory version of which animal?

Koala is the model for the hoax: drop bears are said to lurk in treetops and fall on the heads of walkers below, though the real animal is a docile herbivore.

A physicists' in-joke about over-simplified models assumes which farm animal is a perfect sphere?

A cow is the animal: in the joke a physicist asked to raise a dairy farm's milk output says his solution only works for spherical ones in a vacuum.

A satirical German conspiracy theory, first posted on Usenet in 1994, claims that which city does not exist?

Bielefeld has leaned into the joke: the city has used it in its marketing, and Chancellor Angela Merkel alluded to it in a speech.

Folk tales across India celebrate the quick wit of Birbal, a favourite courtier of which Mughal emperor?

Akbar counted Birbal among his navaratnas, the jewels of his court, though most of the tales pairing the two emerged only in the 19th century.

Soviet-era 'Radio Yerevan' jokes pose as listener questions to a station in which republic's capital?

Armenia gave the format its home name: inside the USSR the fictional station was called Armenian Radio, and its answers mocked shortages and propaganda.

Which stand-up was the first recipient, in 1998, of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor?

Richard Pryor was honoured with so much profanity that a later recipient had twice refused the prize in protest at that first ceremony.

Which writer invented Sidd Finch, a Mets pitcher with a 168 mph fastball, for a 1985 magazine hoax?

George Plimpton gave Finch an English orphanage and yoga lessons in Tibet, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more.

Which future novelist posed as Abyssinian royalty to tour a battleship in the 1910 Dreadnought hoax?

Virginia Woolf, then Virginia Stephen, was one of six pranksters, her brother Adrian among them, who talked their way onto the Navy's flagship.

Which Verdi opera takes its title from the hunchbacked court jester of the licentious Duke of Mantua?

Rigoletto was originally called Triboulet, the jester's name in the Victor Hugo play on which the opera is based.

Which of the Greek Muses presided over comedy and was portrayed holding a comic mask?

Thalia, whose name means the joyous or flourishing one, was shown as a young woman crowned with ivy and wearing boots.

Which French philosopher's 1900 book Laughter argues that comedy arises when people behave like machines?

Henri Bergson gave laughter a moral role: by mocking rigid, automatic behaviour, it pushes eccentric people back into line.

Error code 418, from a 1998 April Fools' coffee-pot protocol, has a web server call itself what?

A teapot is the server's excuse for refusing to brew coffee, and a 2017 campaign to save the code got 418 reserved so nothing official can replace it.

RFC 1149, an April Fools' internet standard from 1990, proposed carrying data packets on which birds?

Pigeons really did the job in 2001, when the Bergen Linux user group sent packets by bird and recorded a packet loss of 55 per cent.

By tradition, which London sweet-seller invented the Christmas cracker in 1847 to sell more bon-bons?

Tom Smith added the snap after hearing a log crackle on his fire; the paper hats and gifts came later from his son Walter.

The Joker joined the card deck in 19th-century America as the top trump for which game?

Euchre players first knew the card as the Best Bower, and the word Joker may come from Jucker, the game's original German spelling.

Which Umberto Eco novel hinges on monks dying over Aristotle's lost book about comedy and laughter?

The Name of the Rose has a monk lace the book's pages with poison, knowing that readers lick their fingers to turn them.

The earliest known printed use of 'dad joke' came in 1987 in the Gettysburg Times, published in which US state?

Pennsylvania also topped a 2023 survey: with Delaware, it reported the highest frequency of dad jokes of any US state.

A 2023 survey of US fathers and their partners found the most-heard dad joke answers a child who says what?

'I'm hungry' sets up the reply 'Hi, Hungry, I'm Dad', the most common gag nationwide and the most heard in several individual states.

In which country are groan-worthy puns nicknamed 'oyaji gyagu', or old man gags?

Japan calls the puns themselves dajare; the young pin them on older men, which makes 'old man gags' a near equivalent of dad jokes.

A well-worn pun says a joke turns into a dad joke at the moment it becomes what?

Apparent sounds exactly like 'a parent'; Men's Health filed the gag under parenting in its list of two hundred dad jokes.

In a classic dad joke, a scarecrow wins an award because he is outstanding in his what?

Field does double duty: the scarecrow literally stands out in one, while the phrase normally praises an expert in a specialism.

A dad-joke one-liner refuses to trust which household feature because it is 'always up to something'?

Stairs fit because they literally lead up to something; the line is a typical one-liner dad joke, with no question-and-answer set-up.

A dad joke blames falling ill only on Saturdays and Sundays on having which kind of immune system?

Weekend is a pun on weakened, as in a weakened immune system; Men's Health listed the line among its 'punny' dad jokes.

Which thing does a dad-joke one-liner say the teller used to hate, until 'it grew on me'?

Facial hair is the only one that literally grows on a person, while the phrase usually means slowly coming to like something.

An old joke asks what is worse than biting into an apple and discovering a worm; what is the answer?

Finding half of one is worse, because the rest has already been eaten; Men's Health filed the gag under 'sick'.

A dad joke about a wife suspected of gluing antique firearms ends with the teller doing what?

Sticking to his guns normally means refusing to back down, but the glue makes it literal; Men's Health filed the gag under 'my wife'.

A dad joke about a band named 999 Megabytes says the group still hasn't managed to get what?

A gig is the pun: at 999 megabytes the band is just short of a gigabyte, so it is still waiting for its first booking.

A one-liner about skipping the marathon in 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022 ends by calling itself what?

A running joke is a gag that keeps coming back, which the marathon turns literal; Good Housekeeping printed it in a list of 315 dad jokes.

A punning spin-off of the chicken riddle has the bird cross the playground to reach the other what?

Slide changes one letter of the original punchline; the same trick sends a whale across the ocean to reach the other tide.

The classic number pun asks why six was afraid of seven; what had seven supposedly done?

Ate nine is what a listener hears in the count 'seven, eight, nine'; writers on mathematical jokes cite it as a classic of numerical humour.

The riddle 'What is black and white and red all over' traditionally has which object as its answer?

A newspaper works because 'red' sounds like 'read'; one folklorist called it perhaps the most common folk riddle collected in the 20th-century United States.

A programmers' pun confuses Christmas with which other holiday, because 25 in decimal equals 31 in octal?

Halloween fits because Oct 31 and Dec 25 can be read as dates or as numbers, and 31 in base eight is 25 in base ten.

A pun riddle in a 1903 American collection asks which flowers can be found between the nose and chin?

Tulips sound like 'two lips'; the collection, Dean Rivers's Conundrums, Riddles and Puzzles, was published in Philadelphia.

An old riddle asks which word of only three syllables combines in it twenty-six letters?

Alphabet holds all twenty-six by definition; the riddle was in print by 1903, beside hundreds of similar groaners in one American collection.

An old pun riddle calls which word the longest in English, with a mile between its first and last letters?

Smiles hides the word 'mile' between its two S's; the riddle appears in a 1903 American collection of conundrums.

Which performer's steel 'gag file' of more than 50,000 jokes on index cards went to the Smithsonian in 2003?

Phyllis Diller offered the 48-drawer cabinet after hearing that Archie Bunker's chair had been donated to the same institution.

The 'Borscht Belt' resorts, a cradle of American Jewish comedy from the 1920s to the 1960s, lay in which mountains?

The Catskills filled each summer with city families escaping the heat in the days before air-conditioning, and the resort stages launched many careers.