Explanations To 28 Jokes Only Smart People Can Understand
Explanations to the Jokes:
1. It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things, literally.
Why it’s funny: Kleptomaniacs are people who have an urge to steal, so they take or steal things all the time. So in this joke – kleptomaniacs always take (steal) things, literally.
2. What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
Why it’s funny: Rhetorical questions are statements that are formulated as a question but that is not supposed to be answered.
3. Three logicians walk into a bar. The bartender asks, “Do all of you want a drink?”
The first logician says “I don’t know.”
The second logician says “I don’t know.”
The third logician says “Yes!”
Why it’s funny: A Logician would answer any question asked to him in yes, no or I don’t know because of insufficient data with his logic. In this joke the first 2 logicians don’t know if the third one will have it, so they reply I don’t know. As in if any one of them would not have wanted to drink they would reply in No but since they replied I don’t know, it means they want to but they don’t know about the others. The third one knows from their replies that the first 2 want to and he also wants to so he replies YES.
4. Einstein, Newton and Pascal are playing hide and go seek. It’s Einstein’s turn to count so he covers his eyes and starts counting to ten. Pascal runs off and hides. Newton draws a one meter by one meter square on the ground in front of Einstein then stands in the middle of it. Einstein reaches ten and uncovers his eyes. He sees Newton immediately and exclaims, ”Newton! I found you! You’re it!” Newton smiles and says “You didn’t find me, you found a Newton over a square meter. You found Pascal!”
Why it’s funny: The Pascal (symbol: Pa) is the SI derived unit of pressure, internal pressure, stress, Young’s modulus and tensile strength. It is a measure of force per unit area, defined as one Newton per square metre. So 1 Pa = 1 N/meter^2.
5. A mathematician and an engineer agreed to take part in an experiment. They were both placed in a room and at the other end was a beautiful naked woman on a bed. The experimenter said every 30 seconds they would be allowed to travel half the distance between themselves and the woman. The mathematician said “this is pointless” and stormed off’. The engineer agreed to go ahead with the experiment anyway. The mathematician exclaimed on his way out “don’t you see, you’ll never actually reach her?” To which the engineer replied, “so what? Pretty soon I’ll be close enough for all practical purposes!”
Why it’s funny: The mathematician immediately comes to know that theoretically it’s impossible to reach, but engineer knows he can get close enough.
6. A Roman walks into a bar and asks for a martin us.
“You mean a martini?” the bartender asks.
The Roman replies, “If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it!”
Why it’s funny: Most words that end in “us” are pluralized by changing the “us” to and “i” (e.g. cactus –> cacti, genius –> genii, Stimulusàstimuli). And most of those words have Latin roots.
So the Latin scholar thinks of “martini” as being plural, so he singularises it by calling it a “martinus”
7. Another Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and says, “Five beers, please”.
Why it’s funny: The two fingers make the shape of “V”, which means 5 in Roman.
8. A logician’s wife is having a baby. The doctor immediately hands the newborn to the dad.
His wife asks impatiently: “So, is it a boy or a girl?”
The logician replies: “yes.”
Why it’s funny: Processing that question through Boolean logic, since the statement has the OR operator. Even if one of the conditions is right the answer would be yes.
9. Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness.
He says to the waitress, “‘I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.”
The waitress replies, “I’m sorry, Monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”
Why it’s funny: Because Sartre believes that an absence of something is still something. Plus, coffee with no milk tastes a lot worse than coffee with no cream.
10. Entropy isn’t what it used to be.
Why it’s funny: Entropy is a measure of disorder, and the Law states that it always increases, when properly accounted for. Examples are shuffling a deck of cards, shaking salt and pepper in the same shaker after carefully placing all the salt on top, and the ongoing need to straighten up the house.
11. How can you tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber? Ask them to pronounce unionized.
Why it’s funny: A more labor-conscious plumber would pronounce the word as “yoon-yun-ized.” A chemist would probably say “un-eye-on-ized.”
12. Why do engineers confuse Halloween and Christmas?
Because Oct 31 = Dec 25
Why it’s funny: The play on words lies in the similarity of the abbreviation for October/Octal and December/Decimal, and the coincidence that the two representations equal the same amount. 25 Octal = 31 Decimal
13. Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Godel, and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar.
Heisenberg turns to the other two and says, “‘Clearly this Is a joke, but how can we figure out if It’s funny or not?”
Godel replies, “‘We can’t know that because we’re inside the joke …
Chomsky says, “Of course it’s funny. You’re just telling It wrong.”
Why it’s funny: Because Heisenberg is uncertain, Godel sees that the joke is logically incomplete, and Chomsky distinguishes between the joke itself and the linguistic performance.
14. Pavlov Is sitting at a pub enjoying a pint, the phone rings and he jumps up shouting “Oh shit, I forgot to feed the dog!”
Why it’s funny: In his experiment, Pavlov used a bell as his neutral stimulus. Whenever he gave food to his dogs, he also rang a bell. After a number of repeats of this procedure, he tried the bell on its own. As you might expect, the bell on its own now caused an increase in salivation.
15. Helium walks into a bar and orders a beer, the bartender says, “‘Sorry, we don’t serve noble gases here.” He doesn’t react.
Why it’s funny: Helium is a noble gas which does not react.
16. Schrödinger’s cat walks into a bar. And doesn’t.
Why it’s funny: Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. The scenario presents a cat that may be both alive and dead, depending on an earlier random event. Although the original “experiment” was imaginary, similar principles have been researched and used in practical applications. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics.
17. A Buddhist monk approaches a hot dog stand and says “Make me one with everything.”
Why it’s funny: The punch line is “make me one with everything”…that’s part of the Buddhist ideal…being “one with everything in the world”.
18. A Higgs Boson walks into a church and the priest says “we don’t allow Higgs Bosons in here”. The Higgs Boson then replies, “but without me, how could you have mass?”
Why it’s funny: The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle discovered and announced at CERN. It would explain why some fundamental particles have mass when the symmetries controlling their interactions should require them to be massless, and why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force. Co-incidentally it is called as the god particle, which can create mass. Here it is used to effect of the church mass.
19. The programmer’s wife tells him: “Run to the store and pick up a loaf of bread. If they have eggs, get a dozen.” The programmer comes home with 12 loaves of bread.
Why it’s funny: As he is a computer programmer he would follow it as a computer instruction. So his wife asked him to get bread and if they had eggs get 12. Since they had eggs he bought 12 loaves of bread.
20. There’s a band called 1023MB. They haven’t had any gigs yet.
Why it’s funny: 1 giga byte = 1024 MB or megabytes. GB is also called as gigs popularly.
21. A photon is going through airport security. The TSA agent asks if he has any luggage. The photon says, “No, I’m traveling light.”
Why it’s funny: “Traveling light” is a turn of phrase used to indicate traveling without much (or any) luggage. In science, a photon is a particle of light (almost always moving).
22. Pretentious? Moi?
Why it’s funny: Only a pretentious person whose daily life doesn’t require French would actually say “moi” and mean it.
23. Two women walk into a bar and talk about the Bechdel test.
Why it’s funny: The Bechdel test is a measure of gender equality in the media. A piece of media is considered to pass the test if it includes at least two women who talk to each other about something besides men. This joke passes the test.
24. Heisenberg was speeding down the highway. A cop pulls him over and says “Do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?” Heisenberg says, “No, but I knew where I was.”
Why it’s funny: Werner Heisenberg was a German physicist and one of the key figures in quantum theory. His famous “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal” states that we can know either where a quantum particle is or how fast it’s moving, but it’s impossible to know both at the same time.
25. C, Eb, and G walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Sorry, no minors.”
Why it’s funny: C, Eb, and G are the musical notes that constitute a C minor chord.
26. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.
Why it’s funny: You were expecting the word “problem,” but the joke-teller replaced it with “precipitate,” which is the solid that forms in a solution of liquid after a chemical reaction has taken place.
27. A linguistics professor says during a lecture that, “In English, a double negative forms a positive. But in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, in no language in the world can a double positive form a negative.” But then a voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”
Why it’s funny: “Yeah” and “right” are technically affirmative words, but put these two positives together and you get an ultra-sarcastic, “Yeah, right.”
28. How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb? A fish
Why it’s funny: Surrealism is an movement all about creating weird illogical art. As this joke makes no sense, it is itself a surrealist work.