• A flounder
• A lobster 
• A native of Hong Kong who has been run over by a cement truck
• A shrimp

Stimulated by a press interview given by a notorious participant in an American scandal more than by reports from Europe on a singular accomplishment in genetic science, one editorial advisor suggested a pun for publication using the 'synthetic quote' (SQ) form.,,
"I am ewe."
-- Cloned sheep to its mother.

Consider the following infantile conundrum, recaste as an SQ...

"Because people are just dying to get in."
-- Jeopardy: "Why did they put a fence around the graveyard?"

nflated terms like 'dying' and 'killing' and 'crazy' have long ago withered into banality, like helium balloons gone flabby. Maybe the groan-effect derives from a counter-posed phenomenon: A puny pun breathing unwelcome life into a worn-out exaggeration. (What good are metaphors if you don't mix them?)

As overstatement, many a figure of speech started out as a silent groaner -- 'Groaners of the First Kind,' let's call them.

• Distressed by a loud boom-box on the subway seems to justify saying, "I could just kill him or her."
• "Insanity is hereditary," reads the bumper sticker. "You get it from your children."
• Someone might even name a television series, "Just Shoot Me." (Naah.)
• Finding your fly unzipped immediately after giving a speech might lead one to declare, "I could just die."

Subsequent literalizations ("dying to get into a graveyard") are mere Groaners of the Second Kind. Spontaneous anguish inflicted upon listeners is assured largely because those verbal clinkers are anything but the wages of creative effort.

Going literal simply cannot be all that funny.

Now, the staff at Puzzles with a Purpose enjoys collecting puns that are creative and fresh, off-beat and -- well, hyperbolic, some of them. Each is a Groaner of the Third Kind, like the one in this puzzle, and each rewards its telling with slack-jawed grimaces and primal vocalizations -- in the extreme, respiratory failure. Such works of art do not deserve the analytic ministrations of a confirmed nasal retentive. Nevertheless, the puzzle presented here ("crushed asians") shall be officially classified as...

• Groaner, Third Kind
• Creative Play on Words
• Item-Out-of-Place
• Preferred Delivery: Verbal
• Pronunciation: Imprecise English

Here are a few groaners for you to suffer from or classify, your choice.

• To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
• Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid bowlers. Unfortunately, all the league records were destroyed in a fire. Thus we'll never know for whom the Tells bowled.
• A man rushed into the doctor's office and shouted, "Doctor! I think I'm shrinking!" The doctor calmly responded, "You'll just have to be a little patient."
• What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway.) 
• A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife complained to the local civic official, who apologized profusely saying, "I must have taken Leif off my census."
• Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.
• A native American was feeling sick. After a brief examination, the medicine man took out a thin strip of elk hide and instructed him to bite off, chew and swallow one inch of the leather every day. After a month, the medicine man returned to see how his patient was feeling. The fellow and said, "The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on."
• The dead batteries were given out free of charge.
• An anthropologist was cataloging South American folk remedies with the assistance of a tribal brujo who indicated that the leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the brujo looked him in the eye and said, "Let me tell you, with fronds like these, who needs enemas?"
• Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess [flight attendent] looks at them and says, "I'm sorry, gentlemen, only one carrion allowed per passenger." 
• Did you hear that NASA recently put a bunch of Holsteins into low earth orbit?  They called it the herd shot 'round the world.
• Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils. 
• Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it, too. 
• A dentist and a manicurist fought tooth and nail. 
• A three legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West. He slides up to the bar and announces: "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw." 
• A thief fell and broke his leg in wet concrete. He became a hardened criminal. 
• Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication. 
• A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."
• The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground. 
• She didn't know where the sun went at night, so she stayed up all night thinking about it. Then it dawned on her. 
• The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.
• A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
• A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Amal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Amal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal." 
• These friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that: Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.
• Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest. 
• A thief broke into the local police station and stole all the lavatory equipment. A spokesperson was quoted as saying, "We have absolutely nothing to go on."
• Which reminds me: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority made an exceptionally clever decision not to provide public restrooms. Uncanny!

hyperbole noun [Latin, from Greek hyperbole excess, hyperbole, hyperbola, from hyperballein to exceed, from hyper- + ballein to throw--more at devil] (15th century): extravagant exaggeration (as "mile-high ice-cream cones").

Short definition: groaner of the first kind (1997 S:TM). -- Ed

pun noun [perhaps from Italian puntiglio fine point, quibble] (1662): the usually humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound.

Short definition: play on words (1939 unattested). -- Ed
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