Spoiler Sat.: Don't Knock the Knock-Knock
Who's there? In a sense, we ALL are, man.
I’d already done one puzzle about well-worn joke genres (the B section, with bar jokes), so I knew I could get some juice out of another. There weren’t a lot of “k” themes to pick from otherwise—especially since I didn’t know kangaroo words by name back then. And there certainly wasn’t going to be another theme that used five letters K in its name, so with that, I was all in.
For many children, knock-knock jokes are an introduction to humor—among the first puns and the first structured jokes they’ve ever heard, and that’s about as true today as it was when I was a kid. Of course they’re simple and often corny, but that’s part of the charm, and that kind of easy, breezy, dad-jokey spirit overlaps a lot of crossword culture too.
Writing the theme clues as knock-knock jokes with missing bits to fill in, though gave me an extra challenge, especially because of the “knitted” format I chose to put them in. (More about the “knitting” aspect of the puzzle tomorrow.) Because of that, I could only exert so much control over what words or phrases I was cluing. Often, I had to find—or invent—a joke that’d work with the name, word, or phrase I was given.
Suppose the word in question was COYOTE. The clue would have to be something like…
[A: Knock knock. B: Who’s there?] A: Ow. B: Ow who? A: You sound like a ____!
(Note: Examples are not direct spoilers, just other jokes I’ve written in the same vein.)
But for some words, that was a lot more difficult than others. I had to give the solver enough so that they’d have a fair chance at a guess, but not so much as to totally give the game away. That’s the usual balancing act, but I also had to be left with a joke that would work as such with everything filled in.
Sometimes I could get around this problem by inserting a little extra text into the joke, retaining its general vibe but perhaps sacrificing a little efficiency in joke-telling…
Answer: IPHONE
A: ___. B: ___ who? A: ___tically manipulate words to make jokes! I looked up how to do it on my ___!
Here, if the solver is a bit stuck by the first part of the joke, the “I looked it up on my” part still provides a broad hint, and once they get a letter or two by other means it should be fair game.
My biggest departure from traditional knock-knockery, though, was to give the person on the inside of the house a little more personality…
Answer: SOLITARY
A: ___. B ___ who? A: ___ items include cheese and yogurt! B: ___ confinement sounds like it wouldn’t be so bad if it got me away from these jokes.
“B” became a little like Bert from Sesame Street, constantly groaning about the endless litany of puns that “A” was subjecting them to, with seemingly no end in sight. As an example of “storytelling by puzzles,” I’m actually happier with how that turned out than anything I tried in the F section. It’s a simple dynamic, sure, but anything more complicated would probably pull too much focus from the solve.
And the participatory nature of solving is one reason these jokes work. By filling in the final word, it’s as if you’re telling the joke yourself…and enjoying the feeling of just how clever you are.
(P.S.: If you’d like more on the nature of knock-knock jokes—including how a couple of them worked in Romania—then check out this study, which I might use or reference in an upcoming Journal of Wordplay issue!)
