“What are the three most important things”, he asked, “that you should bring with you in case you get stranded alone in the desert?”
Hands were raised to suggest food, matches, distress flares and so on, but one boy said: “A compass, a canteen of water and a deck of playing cards.”
“Why those items?” asked the scoutmaster.
The boy replied: “The compass is to find direction, and the water is to prevent dehydration.”
“Yes, I understand that,” said the scoutmaster, “but why would a deck of playing cards be of any use if you were stranded alone in the desert?”
“Well, you know how it is,” said the boy.
"As soon as you start playing solitaire, someone is bound to come up behind you and say, ‘Put that red six on top of the black seven.’”
Joke Poo: The Coding Intern
A senior developer was mentoring a summer intern about efficient debugging strategies. “What are the three most vital tools,” she asked, “to have when you’re lost in spaghetti code?”
Hands went up with suggestions for debuggers, stack trace analyzers, and code coverage tools. But one intern piped up, “Rubber duck, a strong coffee, and a public API key.”
“Why those items?” the senior developer asked, intrigued.
The intern replied, “The rubber duck is for explaining your problems logically, the coffee to keep you awake, but why the public API key?
“Well, you know how it is,” said the intern.
“As soon as you start hitting that API without authentication, someone is bound to show up in your Slack channel and say, ‘Hey, are you rate-limiting? What are you even doing?'”
Alright, let’s dissect this desert-island joke and see what comedic cacti we can cultivate.
Joke Deconstruction:
- Setup: A scoutmaster poses a survival question to his scouts.
- Premise: The unexpected answer of “compass, water, and playing cards.”
- Punchline: The reason for the playing cards: Solitaire will inevitably attract unwanted, unsolicited (and probably incorrect) advice.
- Humor Source: The humor lies in the juxtaposition of a serious survival situation with the mundane and universally relatable experience of someone backseat-gaming your solitaire. It highlights the inherent obnoxiousness of unsolicited advice, even in the face of life-or-death scenarios. The humor is also situational, in the sense that we can imagine a kid being in this scenario to use playing cards, and have this happen to them.
- Key Elements: Survival skills, desert setting, playing cards (specifically solitaire), and unsolicited advice.
Comedic Enrichment: A Witty Observation and a ‘Did You Know’
Witty Observation:
“You know, the real trick to desert survival isn’t finding water, it’s avoiding ‘experts’ who insist you can filter sand through your socks. And trust me, when you’re delirious, even bad advice sounds like a royal flush.”
‘Did You Know?’ Joke
Did you know the longest game of solitaire ever played lasted 1,764 hours? Ironically, the player still got unsolicited advice. Apparently, the ghost of Hoyle kept whispering, “Try the three of clubs, again.”
Rationale:
- Witty Observation: It directly plays off the theme of unwanted advice, expanding it beyond solitaire into the broader (and equally annoying) realm of survival ‘tips.’
- ‘Did You Know’ Joke: It uses the factual concept of the game’s duration to create absurdity by combining it with the theme from the original joke. Hoyle, famous for his rules on card games, could easily be considered to be the person who would be the one giving advice to someone when playing Solitare.
- The length of the game is already a set up on how boring and potentially annoying it is playing the game for so long, so it makes sense why someone would want to help.