masterwordsmith-unplugged

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

There are many riddles that assume a familiarity with this well-known riddle and its answer. One class of variations enlists a creature other than the chicken to cross the road. For example, a turkey or duck crosses "because it was the chicken's day off." Another variant: "Why did the dinosaur cross the road?" "Because chickens weren't invented yet." Or: "Why did the duck cross the road?" "To prove he's not a chicken".

Punning variations include "Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?" to which the answer is "Because he had no guts," or "He had no body to cross with him." "Why did the chicken cross the road halfway? To 'lay it on the line'."

Here's a list of what some famous people could have said about the riddle.

Do leave a comment if you wish your share your thoughts. Next post is a satirical tale called "HAROLD THE HENPECKED HUSBAND".



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WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

Epicurus: For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann Friedrich von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain. Alone.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

Schrodinger: Chicken? Chicken!? Where's my cat?

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

Frank Perdue: I breed the finest chicken I know how, and it crosses the road as part of a vigorous fitness program to raise the leanest, plumpest birds anywhere. And I was chasing it with this axe.

Ronald Reagan: I don't recall.

John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Plato: For the greater good.

Karl Marx: Historical inevitability.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Oliver North: National Security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road," and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Samuel Johnson: (kicks the chicken).

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Have a great day.