Why did the chicken cross the road?

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"Why did the chicken cross the road?" is one of the oldest and most famous riddles still in use in the English language. The most common answer is "To get to the other side." When asked at the end of a series of other riddles, whose answers are clever, obscure, and tricky, this answer's obviousness and straight-forwardness becomes part of the humor.

1 Origin
2 Humor
3 Variations
4 References
5 Further reading
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Origin

This riddle is very old and as a child's riddle,^[1] the original form might be lost forever. The modern-day version of the riddle makes its first published appearance in 1915.^[2] A 1905 reference mixes the riddle amongst other children's riddles.^[3] The earliest published form of the riddle as a joke can be found in an 1892 edition of Potter's American Monthly, which on page 319 gives the riddle in this form:

Why should not a chicken cross the road?

It would be a fowl proceeding.

Here, the riddle is a pun, confounding the term fowl with its homophone foul. Since crossing a road might indeed be dangerous (even before automobiles), such a "proceeding" might be considered foul. But a chicken is a kind of a bird, or fowl. Also, the riddle's sense is inverted: Why should not a chicken cross the road. So this may have been a variation on the original. However, there is some evidence to suggest that this may have been the original form, as the earliest known reference of the riddle comes from an 1876 edition of the Harvard Lampoon,

For why does the chicken cross the road?

Why must yon fowl deflect across the common way?

Here, the riddle is told by a comedian, while the response is retorted by the comedian's antithesis, "a burly knave in doublet and horse" who is understandably concerned about the chicken confusing or frightening his horse. The fowl reference here could be an allusion to the original joke being a pun, or it could simply be the ironic imagery between the comedian and knave which makes this a joke.

[edit] Humor

As is commonly told, the riddle's humor comes from the fact that its answer is expected to be funny, but is in fact, not.^[4] This is known as anti-humor.

There might also be a subtle level of real humor to the "other side" answer. A chicken trying to cross a busy road with many automobiles is very likely to be killed. "The Other Side" is commonly used as a euphemism for death. As the earliest known appearance of this answer appears about the time that automobiles became prevalent, this may, in fact, be related to the joke's origins.

[edit] Variations

Variations include having a turkey or duck cross the road "because the chicken was on vacation." Another variation is "Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?" to which the answer is "because he had no guts." There are endless variations in the wording: "Why did the chicken cross the road halfway? To 'lay it on the line'." In Stripes, Bill Murray and his fellow soldier trainees are going through impromptu drills, and this one is spoken in marching cadence: "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get from the left ... to the right!"

Another variation class has notable persons providing their answer to the riddle. For instance, Plato would respond, "For the greater good." Karl Marx would respond, "To escape the bourgeois middle-class struggle," and Martin Luther King Jr. would say "I have a dream, that one day chickens will be able to cross our roads without having their motives called into question!" Variations here are also endless.

One variation is codified into law. The city council of Quitman, Georgia reportedly^[5] has a law prohibiting chickens from crossing the road.

[edit] References

^ Humor in Children's Lives by Amelia Klein reports that a variation on this riddle is an 8 to 11 year old's favorite joke
^ Writing For Vaudeville by Brett Page, now in the public domain. Note: the author notes the form of the joke -- not the joke itself -- is considered passe.
^ At the Sign of the Jackle Lantern, Myrtle Reed; 1905, G. P. Putnam's sons

How much is three times humpty-steen?

Elaine, Have you forgotten?

Why does a chicken cross the road?

Who carries home a toper's load?

You are so very stupid, dear!

Elaine, have you forgotten?
^ Psychology in the Making: histories of selected research problems; Leo Postman; 1962; Knopf
^ Loony Laws & Silly Statutes By Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts, Published 1994 Sterling Publishing Company, Inc; ISBN 0806904720