Imaginative Mixes to Make You Laugh

(By Julie Dawn Fox)

‘What do you get if you cross …?’ joke: a type of joke that asks what would happen if you mixed two unrelated objects， and gives a funny and unexpected result.

Crazy combinations

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you mixed two unrelated objects like strawberries and roads or a chicken and an alarm together? Sometimes the results would be very strange or dif fi cult to imagine but with a little creative thinking， they can be very funny. In fact， jokes that ask， ‘What do you get if you cross X with Y?’ are very popular in English.

Same word, different meaning

Question: What do you get if you cross a strawberry with a road?

Answer: A traf fi c jam.

Do you see the joke? Jam is often made from strawberries but a traffic jam is a line of vehicles on the road. Words with multiple meanings are typical in this kind of joke.

Sounds right

A lot of these combination jokes depend on your knowledge of the things that are being mixed. Many jokes are based on the noises that animals make or words that sound alike.Look at this example:

Question: What do you get if you cross a chicken with something that wakes you up?

Answer: An alarm cluck.

Chickens make a clucking noise and cluck sounds like clock. Alarm clocks wake you up.What’s it famous for?

Another common way of making combination jokes is by using well-known characteristics or actions. Do you get this joke?

Question: What do you get if you cross a kangaroo with a sheep?

Answer: A woolly jumper.

Kangaroos jump and sheep are covered in wool. A ‘jumper’ can be a sweater or something that jumps.

Famous characters and history

Some combination jokes use fictional characters from fi lms or books， or even real historical events. Do you know the story of the Titanic， a luxury cruise ship that sank on its very fi rst trip? Well， here’s a joke about that:Question: What do you get if you cross the Atlantic Ocean with the Titanic?

Answer: About half way across.

This joke is funny because of the different meaning of the word ‘cross’—in this case， it means to travel from one side to another.

Can you think of any more crazy combination jokes?