Wisecracks, Witticisms, and Wordplay

If you find pleasure in wearing pants, will you pant with pleasure? If a doe has a need to know, should you say no to her request to knead dough? If you’d like to chain someone to a restaurant, should you make sure it’s a restaurant chain? Such tightly wound questions set the tone for Puns Upon a Time, where language bends, overlaps, and cheerfully tangles itself. Mischievous and delightfully absurd, these layered puns can verge on the surreal. The entries have a brain-tickling, riddle-like quality—precise in construction, playful in intent, and brimming with intellectual mischief—as they layer homonyms and idioms into surreal new shapes, inviting the reader to linger, ponder, and delight in what is ultimately an unbridled celebration of language.

Ninad Jog is a devoted pursuer of wordplay and the author of several books, including the award-winning pun collections Son of a Pun and Dew Diligence. A former columnist for Trikone magazine, he lives near Washington, D.C., where he continues to twist the English language into joyful knots.