If you’d like the literal reason I started throwing rubber chickens, it’s because I wanted to break the Guinness World Record for the longest throw of a rubber chicken. Just as there is an art to throwing rubber chickens, so too is there an art to practicing the act without detection. (And for that matter, better punch lines for the road-crossing chicken!) Read on for some of our favorite “why did the chicken cross the road” jokes with answers.
“Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip? To get to the same side.” “Why did Darth Vader cross the road? To get to the Dark Side.” “Why did the dinosaur cross the road? Chickens didn’t exist yet.” “Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide.”
“Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road” Jokes for Kids and Adults
If there are presently any chickens in Sinn Fein, we are not aware of it. So where does the chicken joke came from? ‘Well, why does a chicken with a sack of flour on its back cross the street? Note the way that ‘why the chicken’ has effectively become an adjective. The chicken owner, incidentally, was not found liable… By 1919 an American playwright can include a rather good dialogue with the chicken joke in (When the Circus came to Town).
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One admitted they understood it after reading a joke to their children once. “All these years, I thought that little f—er was just crossing the road,” she added in a viral commentary peppered with fowl language. ” one X user posted in December.
The original “why did the chicken cross the road” joke? The joke has become iconic as an exemplary generic joke to which most people know the answer, and has been repeated and changed numerous times over the course of history. The first time I broke the record, unofficially and by myself, was on a breezy November day. As we finished our conversation, Gürcü urged me to stay in touch with questions about technique or chicken dimensions. He was the first (and only) throwing coach to respond to my inquiries, and I could hear his bewilderment as we spoke over the phone.
I ask why the chicken crossed the road and you answer, say, ‘To get to the Shell station’ or anything other than the dread doom-laden syllables ‘to get to the other side’. Of course, an important part of the modern chicken joke is that expectations are dashed. ‘Why does a chicken run across the road in dirty weather? The chicken joke is caught in aspic in that moment, in the middle of the nineteenth century. To get to the other side.’ It is one of the most tedious jokes in history, but it is also one of the oldest in continuous use.
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Just possibly some of the variant questions show the same. Variant answers were already cropping up by the 1860s. The joke proved rather rare in the years that followed. Note that at this date there is no sense that it was commonly known, at least not to the Knickerbocker’s long-suffering joke editor (what a hellish job). “No wonder the last one went screaming all the way home,” another user commented.
Dimensions-wise, the rubber chicken I’d settled on was a near match to the one Gürcü had recommended, though there were key sartorial differences. The chicken I was throwing was not the same model Gürcü had used. He instructed me to grasp my rubber chicken by the neck and plant my back foot.
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- Reader’s Digest has been telling jokes for more than 100 years, curated and reviewed over the last 20 years by Senior Features Editor Andy Simmons, a humor editor formerly of National Lampoon and the author of Now That’s Funny.
- While some seem won over by the macabre reading of the classic joke format, others reckon they may need more convincing.
- My warmup throws, aided by a trusty onshore breeze, were promising.
- After about half an hour of watching me throw, Mellion took out his phone and tapped open its measurement app.
- VSauce explained that when we hear a joke, our brains instinctively start predicting complex or surprising outcomes.
Because of the Guinness rules forbidding a participant from gripping the chicken by the head or neck, I had tweaked my approach to more closely resemble a javelin toss. ” In the immediate term, though, I had just a few weeks to break this record. “Don’t think you’re running out of time,” Lachman told me. “Realize you have a lot of time left. Meanwhile, as Trump-era cronyism runs unchecked, the country’s trust in government is nearing an all-time low. More than other age groups captured in another recent study, we’re burning through our paid time off to simply lie down and sleep.
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But could there finally be something to that sentiment in 2025, with the youngest of our cohort about to turn 30 and the oldest around 44? You throw out the conventional rules of doing something well and instead focus on doing one aspect of it to the max. He held up his winning chicken, a 13-inch latex bird with a crimson head and cartoonish blue eyes. To maximize my distance, Gürcü explained, I would need a chicken whose weight exceeded 150 grams and whose height was short enough that it didn’t catch too much drag in midair.
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Interestingly, this recent X discussion is by no means the first time the question has been asked. However, the free-thinking X user isn’t suggesting the animal has accidentally become roadkill, but rather it made a conscious decision to “cross the road” into the afterlife. ‘Why does a chicken cross the street? Reader’s Digest has been telling jokes for more than 100 years, curated and reviewed over the last 20 years by Senior Features Editor Andy Simmons, a humor editor formerly of National Lampoon and the author of Now That’s Funny. The “joke” is so unfunny and obvious that it’s almost an anti-joke.
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Unfortunately he observed an astoundingly high mortality of brown snakes due to car strikes as the snakes attempted to cross the roads surrounding RUEP. Oftentimes, population ecology of herpetofauna is overlooked in the existing body of literature due to their elusive and secretive nature. Photo of Dekay’s brown snake trying to cross the road; by Tianqi Huang, PhD student Rutgers Ecology & Evolution Program My best attempt was about 103 feet—roughly 12 short of Gürcü’s record. I’d found the right chicken, the right mechanics.
People are just learning the true meaning behind ‘Why did the chicken cross the road’ joke
Some variants are both puns and references to the original, such as “Why did the duck cross the road? To prove he’s no chicken”. For example, a duck (or turkey) crosses “because it was the chicken’s day off”, and a dinosaur crosses “because chickens didn’t exist yet”. One class of variations enlists a creature other than the chicken to cross the road, in order to refer back to the original riddle. Why should not a chicken cross the road? According to music critic Gary Giddins in the Ken Burns documentary Jazz, the joke was spread through the United States by minstrel shows beginning in the 1840s as one of the first national jokes. For example (in the map below), there is a hotspot of snake mortality where snakes are crossing Ave E from the RUEP to the stormwater management basin (to the north).
How to use this joke
In fact, it’s common for them to travel modest distances via stints of explosive flapping. Others expressed concerns that animals crossing could cause road accidents. A video posted by TikTok user @yolo_thuswetravel on Jan 23 shows the animals attempting to cross the busy road as a flurry of vehicles approach. SINGAPORE – Morning commuters were forced to slow down after being greeted by an unexpected sight on Upper Thomson Road – a mother hen and five chicks crossing the road. According to the rescue, “Curly is a cutie patootie who’s part of our SWEET litter (also adoptable)!
- Unfortunately he observed an astoundingly high mortality of brown snakes due to car strikes as the snakes attempted to cross the roads surrounding RUEP.
- Much of this is true of rubber chickens too.
- One admitted they understood it after reading a joke to their children once.
- The video has since garnered 418,400 views and 22,400 likes, with netizens praising the motorists for ensuring the chickens’ safety and joking that the animals should be fined for jaywalking.
- The original “why did the chicken cross the road” joke?
Not ideal, especially since records this niche are won on the margins, through clever manipulations of one’s conditions. My warmup throws, aided by a trusty onshore breeze, were promising. By sheer chance, the surveyors I’d found—a father–daughter duo—had both been competitive throwers themselves. In addition to measuring each throw’s distance, they chicken road game had to ensure that the surface was completely level. He and his friend had been watching me the whole time, despite my efforts at subterfuge. My best throw that day—around 116 feet—was undoubtedly wind-assisted.
Dark Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road Jokes
There are many riddles that assume a familiarity with this well-known riddle and its answer.
As Lachman spoke, I wondered if my chicken-throwing record might count in the same way. It turns out that as with traditional bird flight, the ideal rubber chicken throw is all about physical parameters. Much of this is true of rubber chickens too. (A £200 donation to the Loyalist Prisoners Association will ensure free passage of the chicken with respect to the road and the crossing thereof, till the same time next month anyhow. Do chickens have kneecaps?) But it’s become so ubiquitous that it’s spawned all sorts of variations, parodies and jokes about other things crossing the road. I would instead have to throw across the wind, aiming my chickens far to the right and watching them slice down into our agreed-upon target area.