30 Jokes Only Intellectuals Will Understand


Don’t burn your eyes trying to read the explanation – copy/paste it into a notepad before reading.

1. It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.

Pun is wordplay with two meanings, one literal the other humorous. kleptomaniacs is someone who ‘take things’ (steal).

2. What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?

What do you get when you cross an XXXX with a YYYY” is a common opening to a joke, leading the listener to prepare for the expected joke template and punchline. A rhetorical question is a question asked or stated to make a point, and not an actual inquiry with an expectation of an answer. The joke is that that sentence is a rhetorical question. So the answer is you don’t really get a joke, you just get a meaningless rhetorical question. Which is sort of funny, which actually does make it a joke. [Thanks verywary & rocketvat]

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!”

Explanation: If any one of the three logicians does NOT want a beer, the answer to the bartender’s question is “No.” The first logician wants a beer, but doesn’t know whether his two friends do. So he says “I don’t know.” The second logician now knows that the first logician wants a beer, because if he didn’t he would have said no. And though he does want a beer, the he still doesn’t know whether the third logician wants a beer. So he says “I don’t know.” The third logician now knows that the first two logicians want beer, because otherwise one of them would have said no. So, as he also wants a beer, he now knows that all three logician wants a beer. So he can say “Yes.” [Thanks methamatician]

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 Pascal!”

Pascal is Newton over a square meter.

5. How can you tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber? Ask them to pronounce unionized.

The difference b/w un-ionized and union-ized.

6. Why do engineers confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because Oct 31 = Dec 25

We use the Decimal base (shorthand DEC) for our number system. Octal is another base system (shorthand OCT) if you convert Decimal 25, it is equivalent to OCT 31.

7. An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The bar tender: “What’ll it be, boys?” The first mathematician: “I’ll have one half of a beer.” The second mathematician: “I’ll have one quarter of a beer.” The third mathematician: “I’ll have one eight of a beer.” The forth mathematician: “I’ll have one sixteenth of a …” The bar tender interrupts: “Oh, fuck the lot of ya!” …and he pours a single full beer.

In mathematics, the infinite series 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + · · · converges to a sum of 1.



8. Two kittens on a sloped roof. Which one slides off first?

The one with the lowest mew.

Mew here means friction. coefficient of friction -> μ -> mu -> mew

9. A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and says, “Five beers, please”.

5 in Roman = V

10. 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 did you buy 12 loaves of bread!?”, his wife screamed. “Because they had eggs!”

11. A programmer’s wife sends him to the store and says “get some bread, and while you’re there pick up some eggs” The programmer never returns.

The ‘while’ statement in programming languages never ‘returns’ unless something breaks it.

12. 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”.

Any questions that use “and” or “or” are logical questions, that is, can either be “true” or “false”. Is it a boy or a girl? Yes (it’s one of them).

13. Entropy isn’t what it used to be

In any real thermodynamic process or a system the total entropy of the at the end versus the beginning is always bigger i.e. it always increases.

14. Helium walks into a bar and orders a beer, the bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve noble gases here.” He doesn’t react.

In chemistry, Helium belongs to the noble gases that doesn’t react to any substance.

15. Schrödinger’s cat walks into a bar. And doesn’t.


It refers to the famous Schrödinger’s experiment where he put the cat with a radioactive substance in a box. The experiment postulates that the cat can either be living or dead but we don’t know until we open the box.

16. Two men walk into a bar, the first orders H2O, the second says “I’ll have H2O too!” The second man dies.

First guy says H2O (meaning water). Second guy says H20 (too) as in H202 (meaning hydrogen peroxide). Hydrogen peroxide ishighly reactive and will kill you.

17. A neutron walks into a bar. He orders a beer and asks the bartender how much he owes. The bartender replies, “For you? No charge.”

Atoms are composed of positively charged protons, negatively charged electrons and neutrons with no charge on them.

18. There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who know binary and those who don’t.

In Binary the value 2 is represented by 10 (a one and a zero).

19. A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician are sitting outside of a bar when two men walk into the house across the road… Ten minutes later, three men walk out.

The physicist looks confused and says “There must an error in the measurements.”
The biologist retorts “No, they must have reproduced!”
To which the mathematician says “If one person goes inside, the house will be empty.”

From an outside perspective, there are 0 people inside. Add 2 people to the house, now the house has 2 people. Subtract 3 people (pretend a person materialized out of no where and is missing a person). Now the house has -1 people. So adding 1 person would make the house contain 0 persons, or as we understand it: be empty. [Thanks ibcooley]

20. A Photon checks into a hotel and the bellhop asks him if he has any luggage. The Photon replies “No I’m traveling light”

Photon is a light particle

21. Two atoms are walking down the street. The first one stops and says “I think I just lost an electron!” The second one replies “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive!”

An atom with one less electron is a positively charged atom.

22. A farmer has a problem with foxes eating his hens. So he asks his physicist friend to help find a solution. The physicist spends a day thinking, then replies “Well, I’ve found a solution, but it will only work for spherical chickens in a vacuum”.

Basically, the joke is that scientists can ‘theoretically solve anything’, but the practical application of their work is often hindered greatly by physical effects (such as resistance, gravity, etc.). Hence, spherical chickens (a sphere having equal distribution of forces applied on its surface) and in a vacuum (where there is no resistance). [scepticalprophet]

Physicists always find a solution for ideal condition like “If we have an object moving with x speed and blah blah, ASSUMING there is no other forces and blah, blah”. Well assumptions are like “the object is a perfect sphere” or “there is no frictions, as if we were in vacuum”. Things like that. [Thanks Copioli]

23. Q: What do you get when you put root beer in a square glass? A: Beer

In mathematics, ‘root’ and ‘square’ cancel out each other.

24. A man is on his first visit to Boston, and he wants to try some of that delicious New England seafood that he’d long heard about. So he gets into a cab, and asks the driver, “Can you take me to where I can get scrod?” The driver replies, “I’ve heard that question a thousand time, but never in the pluperfect subjunctive.”

In English, the Pluperfect Subjunctive tense of ‘screwed’ is ‘scord’. And scrod is a type of fish. The driver has heard people asking him to take some place where they can get screwed.

25. Who does Polyphemus hate more than Odysseus?

Nobody!

In “The Odyssey,” the classic sequel to Homer’s “Iliad,” Odysseus goes through a lot of stuff trying to get home…
One of these things is crashing on an island and being captured by a cyclops, who was going to eat him and his crew.
The cyclops’ name is Polyphemus.

Odysseus gets the cyclops drunk, and Polyphemus asks Odysseus what his name is. Odyssesu says his name is, “Nobody.”

Odysseus blinds the cyclops while he’s sleeping, and then convinces him that the prisoners are escaping through the cracks between the cave entrance and the huge boulder he uses as a door (the cyclops is very dumb).

So Polyphemus opens his cave and shouts out to the other cyclops, “Help! Nobody is attacking me!” or some variation on that. Naturally, the other cyclops think he’s still drunk or insane or whatever and do nothing. Odysseus and his men escape. [Thanks el Águila]

26. A mathematician finishes a large meal and says: √(-1/64)

Explanation: √(-1/64) = √(-1)/(8) = i / 8 = (i over 8)

27. Did you hear about the man who got cooled to absolute zero?

He’s 0K now.

0k = zero Kelvin is equivalent to −273.15°C also known as absolute zero. He’s not OK, he’s 0k

28. There’s a band called 1023MB. They haven’t had any gigs yet.

One gigabyte or one gig in computer storage is 1024 megabytes or 1024MB.

29. A Buddhist monk approaches a hotdog stand and says “make me one with everything”.

The joke is a play on words, as the oft-quoted Buddhist “motto” is to “be at one” or “be at peace” with everything natural in the world.

30. The vendor makes the hot dog and hands it to the Buddhist monk, who pays with a $20 bill. The vendor puts the bill in the cash box and closes it. “Excuse me, but where’s my change?” asks the Buddhist monk. The vendor replied, “Change must come from within.”

When the Buddhist asked for his change, the vendor also used play of words by quoting a famous Buddhist statement “Change must come from within.” 

Source: Reddit