These simple games are like little puzzles. Good for novice comedians, improvisers, people interested in improving their creative thinking skills in a simple and fun way, or just looking for an alternative to sudoku =)
Puns are words that sound alike (bear/bare, paws/pause, cards/carbs), different meanings of the same word (potato chips / computer chips, train station / train a dog), words within words (cat/cat-astrophe). Take a word, and change a few letters to turn it into a different word, and you've made a pun.
Start with common idioms, phrases, books, movie titles, song titles, and then change them into a pun.
A Tale of Two Cities > A Tail of Two Kitties
Jurassic Park > Jurassic Parking
The Walking Dead > The Working Dad
More advanced version: pick a specific topic, and make puns related to that topic:
Topic: Food
Beauty and the Beast > Beauty and the Yeast
House of Cards > House of Carbs
Break a leg > Bake a leg
Use the puns to fill in the following template:
[blank] walks into a bar. The bartender says, we don’t serve [blanks] here. The [blank] says [pun].
For example:
A penguin walks into a bar. The bartender says, 'We don't serve penguins here.' The penguin says, 'Well, this place isn't very ICE to visitors'.
To do this step by step:
Topic: Cow.
Related words: Bell, herd, horns, tail, graze, offal, beef.
Pun: Herd/heard, graze/grace, offal/awful, beef/brief.
Joke:
A cow walks into a bar.
The bartender says, "We don't serve cows here."
The cow says, "Why are you being so offal to me?"
This game is similar to the bartender game, but in a different format:
How come oysters never donate to charity? Because they’re shellfish.
Step by step example:
Topic: Cats
Related words: Whiskers, tail, paws, meow.
Puns: Whiskers / whisk her (away). Tail / detectives tailing someone, cat/category.
Joke: How did they catch a cat burglar? There was a tail.
The trick is to come up with a punchline that uses the 2nd word of the pun, but also grammatically makes sense with the first one. Then make a setup that uses the first one.
Pun: Cat/category.
Punch line ideas: fit in a category, categorize something, categorically false.
With a setup: Why do cats make such great librarians? They love to categorize things.
One more example:
Litter/literature: What's a kitten's favorite subject in school? Litter-ature!
Same as a previous game, but instead of a strict question-answer format, you can use any statement, sentence, lines of dialogue.
Topic: Birds.
Related words: Wings, beaks, fly, nest, eggs, peck, feather.
Puns: Wings/wing-man, beak/beakon, peck/impeccable, eggs/legs.
Wings/wing-man: I always bring my pigeon to nightclubs, he's a great wing-man.
Peck/impeccable: Buy this fence, and your chickens will never escape! It's impeckable!
Topic: Factory work.
Words: Worker, union, blue collar, machine, printing press, production, foreman.
Worker's union / marriage union:
- We're unionising!
- Are you guys going to consummate your union?
Take one of the following templates and a random topic.
Name things that are true about the topics and make an absurd yet grammatically correct combination with the template.
Sex with me is like...
- Running a marathon: you'll be bragging about it for the rest of your life, I don't know why anyone does it, you'll wanna give up halfway through, if you search on the internet you'll find a video of a lady shitting herself in the middle of it.
- TV Show: steadily goes downhill, takes way too long to finish, has too many people participating in it, involves someone who's name I barely remember, popular with unemployable losers.
- Dental checkups: once every 6 months, a little bit painful.
- Tandem bicycle: someone's gonna have a view of the butt the whole time.
I like my lovers like I like my....
- Cars: a little damaged but fixable.
- Yard work: dirty, watching someopne else do it.
- Ikea furniture: always falling apart in front of me.
- Hollywood agents: no matter how hard I try I cant get their attention.
Are you a... because...
- Flip phone: you got my fingers busy, I had you in early 2000s, you have a smake that keeps getting loger and longer
- Flat earther: because I wanna take you to the edge.
- Tim burton movie: I bet you were better 20 years ago.
Threesomes are like...
- War of 1812: Dads dont participate in it but are obsessed with it, not as memorable as the first one but arguably more important.
- A game of twister: fun in theory but rarely happens.
Let's do it like...
- Billionaires: fuck everyone over, with high amounts of interests, get other people to do all the work.
Orgies are like...
- Uber pool: just waiting around to be a part of one, there'll always be a generous tip.
- Thanksgiving: there's a lot of meat that needs to get stuffed.
- Cerberus: awful lot of head.
- Open-call audition: Im never getting a callback, there are like 50 musical theater majors there.
Is your name...
- Robin hood: you can shoot your arrow into my bulls eye.
- Serena Williams (tennis player): I like your sister better, you've been hitting my balls for 40 minutes.
- R.L. Stine (author of goosebumps): he makes me shiver, you scare me and I like it.
Things you can say about ..., but not about your partner.
- Clothes: This fits a little tight, oh dont worry it's just a rental, I got mine from China.
- Car: No matter how much I pump I just can't fill this thing, I'm so glad I have a spare, so hard to fit in these european models.
- Restaurant: Last time I was there I was sick for 3 days, it's quite a line I may have to go around the back.
- Computer: Time to upgrate
A more freeform version of the previous game. Pick two random topics, then come up with a statement that's true about both topics. It's useful to make one topic mundane/innocent, and another one slightly racy/naughty/nsfw. Then you just think about ordinary statements about the mundane topic that can also apply to the racy one (the statements will simply make sense with the mundane topic, and create absurd contrast when applied to racy one).
Cats are like...
- Nipples: sometimes get too hairy, my grandma has two.
Children are like...
- Spiders: rarely stay still, hard to love, will try to crawl on you when it's dark
Socks are like...
- The patriarchy: feels great when thrown away, mostly white, are a must in the bedroom.
Another format:
Something you can say in an [innocent situation], and in a [dirty situation]
- Something you can say when talking to your step-daughter, and when getting brazilian wax: "wait till your mother sees this!"
- Something you can say at your nanas funeral, and when skinny dipping: I wish pop-pop was here.
- Something you can say to your therapist, and when losing your virginity: I'm sorry for crying so much.
- Something you can say when getting braces tightened, and when in a porno: Oh, fuck, oh my god, oh, oh!
- Something you can say when coaching little league team, and when friendzoning someone: Sorry, I failed you, as a coach, as a mentor, as a man.
Start with a subject you want to describe, name a characteristic this subject has, then come up with an absurd, vivid, colorful metaphor to describe it.
- [someone or something] is [characteristic]: like [metaphor].
- [character] did [action]: like [metaphor].
For example:
- Old engine: The engine coughed to life like an asthmatic walrus.
- Running fast: She took off like a raccoon fleeing a vacuum cleaner.
- Socially awkward person: He navigated office politics with all the subtlety of a rhinoceros in a china shop doing the macarena.
- The old professor shuffled through the library stacks like a wise penguin searching for the perfect fish.
- The ancient computer whirred to life with the determination of a retired circus bear attempting one last unicycle performance.
- Memories of that night bounced around her head like old socks in a dryer.
- His room was as messy as a divorce between two tornados.
To make metaphors absurd, compare characteristics to things that are completely unrelated or exaggerated, think of things that share these characteristics, but are wildly out of context.
For example:
Clumsy guy.
- What’s the weirdest, most unexpected thing that moves clumsily?
- What animal, person, or object would never belong in this situation? A penguin on roller skates, a refrigerator on a skateboard, or a giraffe in high heels.
Practice being as specific as possible, add details:
He walked across the room like a refrigerator on roller skates, wobbling with the grace of a caffeinated moose.
Compare a thing to its opposite:
X does Y with the [positive quality] of [something terrible at that quality]
For example:
- He moved with the grace of a drunken elephant.
- He danced across the floor with the grace of a refrigerator being pushed down a staircase.
- The meeting dragged on like a snail pulling a freight train through peanut butter.
- The bureaucrat processed their request with the enthusiasm of a sloth on sleeping pills.
- The project deadline approached with the gentle grace of a brick avalanche.
- He approached the piano with the confidence of a penguin trying to fix a microwave.
- Her cooking had the same relationship to Italian cuisine as a brick has to synchronized swimming.
- When he tried to explain quantum physics, his words twisted around each other like spaghetti in a washing machine.
- She smiled sweetly, like a crocodile at an all-you-can-eat petting zoo.
Make metaphors that exaggerate a characteristic as much as possible:
[Topic] is so [attribute] that [exaggerated example]
For example:
My cat is so picky...
she sends her water bowl back to the kitchen for being the wrong temperature
she interviews other families before letting them pet her
My roommate is so messy...
the health department classified our apartment as a new ecosystem
even my garbage complained about living with him
