A pun is useless by construction. It tells you nothing about the world; it only tells you that two words sound alike, which you already knew. What makes a bad one worth keeping is the silence afterwards — a good pun gets a laugh, a bad pun gets a pause, and the pause is longer and more memorable.
Thirty below, sorted loosely by how much you will resent them.
Thirty, no apologies
- I was going to become a baker, but I could not make enough dough. Also I did not apply.
- Old bicycles never retire. They just get recycled.
- The cheese factory exploded. There was nothing left but de-brie.
- I sold my vacuum cleaner. It was just gathering dust.
- The calendar factory worker was sacked for taking a day off.
- I used to be a tailor, but the job did not suit me and the hours were sew long.
- A backwards poet writes inverse.
- The scarecrow won an award. He was, once again, outstanding.
- I know a man who lost his left arm and leg. He is all right now.
- The magician got so angry he pulled his hare out.
- Two silk worms had a race. It ended in a tie.
- I wrote a song about a tortilla. It is more of a wrap.
- The shovel was a ground-breaking invention and nobody has dug deeper since.
- I stayed up all night wondering where the sun had gone, and then it dawned on me.
- A boiled egg every morning is hard to beat.
- The clockmaker took his time and was fired for it.
- I tried writing with a broken pencil. Pointless.
- The banker quit because he lost interest, which was the only thing he was good at.
- I made a belt of herbs. It was a waist of thyme, and yes, we have done this one before, and yes, we will do it again.
- The barber won an award for the closest shave.
- Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.
- The frog parked illegally and got toad.
- The mathematician’s plants died. He had too many square roots.
- The dentist and the manicurist argued and fought tooth and nail.
- I was addicted to the hokey cokey, but I turned myself around.
- The chimney sweep had a soot-able job.
- A pessimist’s blood type is always B negative.
- I bought a wooden whistle. It wooden whistle. So I bought a steel whistle. It steel wooden whistle.
- The grand piano fell down the mine shaft. A flat minor.
- Puns about vegetables are corny, which is exactly why the last twenty-nine were necessary.
How to survive telling them
Puns need a run-up and a total absence of shame. The technique is to deliver the pun as the least interesting part of the sentence — bury it, do not present it. “The cheese factory exploded, there was nothing left but de-brie” works because the first clause is told straight, like news. Announce that a pun is coming and you have removed the only surprise available to you.
The site’s original thirty puns are the gentler set. For the same crime committed in a different form, see the dad jokes.