Jokes can either be really funny or really clever, but never both. Or so we thought.
You’ll either find yourself laughing out loud, or you’ll grin silently while thinking to yourself ‘yes, that is amusing’. Or, more often, neither of those things.
As is ever so often the case when looking for things we’d assumed can’t legitimately exist, our search has taken us to the depths of Reddit.
There, we discovered this thread, asking people for their ‘most intellectual’ jokes.
Relaying the entire thing would, quite frankly, be a waste of time. Especially when we already know the 10 funniest jokes in the world.
But we’ve picked out the best ones, and – if you’re feeling lost at any point – explained them below.
1.
A biologist, a chemist, and a statistician are out hunting. The biologist shoots at a deer and misses 5ft to the left, the chemist takes a shot and misses 5ft to the right, the statistician yells “We got ‘em!”
- TustinIsTheBest
2.
Guy goes on a date and the next day his friend asks how it went.
Guy: Well, not so great. I couldn’t stop talking about my obsession with simplifying fractions.
Friend: Yeah, you really shouldn’t do that.
Guy: Yeah well, you know what they say. Hindsight is 1.
- DothrakAndRoll
3.
A Roman senator walks into a bar and orders a martinus. The bartender looks at him quizzically and says, “You mean a martini?”
The senator shakes his head and replies, “No thanks, just one.”
- Cleev
4.
Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, working on an early draft of Being and Nothingness. He asks the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.” The waitress says, “I’m sorry, Monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”
- DUNE_IS_A_SHIT_BOOK
5.
I bought the world’s worst Thesaurus yesterday. Not only is it terrible, but it’s terrible.
- Ardaz
6.
A Roman senator arrives late for a session and finds that Cicero is already in the middle of one of his long speeches. After trying to catch up for a few minutes he gives up and asks another senator, “What is he talking about now?” and the man replies: “I don’t know, we’re still waiting for the verb”.
- welpimnewtothis
7.
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
- cky_stew
8.
First guy walks into a bar and says, “I’ll have H2O”. Second guy walks into a bar and says, “I’ll have H2O too”. The second guy dies.
- stereo_ghost
9.
A physicist runs a red light, and a cop pulls him over.
“Sir,” says the cop, “you just ran a red light.”
“It looked like it was green to me, officer.”
The cop writes him a ticket for speeding instead.
- NobleCuriosity3
10.
Schrödinger gets pulled over, and the cop decides to search his car. Cop says, “Do you know there’s a dead cat in your trunk?” Schrödinger says, “I do now!”
- tinyahjumma
11.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
- nestlebottle
12.
An infinite line of mathematicians walk in to a bar. The first mathemtician orders a beer, the second, half a beer, the third a fourth of a beer, etc.
The bartender sets two beers down and says, “You gentlemen should really know your limits.”
- wseibert
13.
Why did nobody at the round table laugh when King Arthur farted?
Because noble gases don’t cause reactions
- TheSwobbit
14.
A programmer received a shopping list: “Buy a packet of milk, if they have eggs buy a dozen”. The programmer returned with 13 packets of milk
- FastPole
Now, we’re pretty sure you’re smart enough to have worked these out by yourselves. However, just in case, here are some explanations:
1. The statistical average of the two shots would hit the deer.
2. He’s taken the saying ‘Hindsight is 20/20’ and simplified the fraction to get 1.
3. In Latin, when the singular of something ends in -us, the plural ends in -i.
4. Based on Sartre’s philosophy, as written in Being and Nothingness, absence is a quality something can have as part of its existence.
5. A good thesaurus would include synonyms for the word ‘terrible’, not just the same word again.
6. Latin grammar puts the verb at the end of a sentence, and Cicero spoke in long sentences.
7. The number two is written as 10 in binary.
8. H2O is water, while H2O2 is Hydrogen Peroxide, which can kill people. ‘Too’ sounds like ‘two’. Bet you wish you hadn’t asked.
9. If you’re going really fast, red light can appear green.
10. Come on, surely you know about Schrödinger’s cat.
11. A rhetorical question doesn’t have an answer (?).
12. Rather than pouring an infinite number of beers, the bartender pours two pints, which is what all the orders cannot exceed (the ‘limit’).
13. Noble gases (Helium, Neon, etc) have low to no chemical reactivity. King Arthur was nobility. Gas is another word for a fart. I’m very tired.
14. He took the instructions logically rather than thinking about other meanings. There were eggs in the store, so he bought a dozen gallons of milk because his wife didn’t say ‘a dozen eggs’.
(Images: YouTube/iStock)
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