Wizards of Odds

By Peter Lloyd

What do an Alex Trebek game show, gambling expert, mystery play, cafe, gift and antique shops, LA Law episode, Science Guy installment, jazz composition, and Chicago gangster all have in common? You’ll never guess, so don’t even try.

Well, actually, I gave you the answer in the title of this Workout. Yes, they all have used the name Wizard of Odds. And the point?

Humans Love Humor
Puns like Wizard of Odds represent the most basic form of humor. From Shakespeare’s “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York,” to the first joke I remember hearing—Why did the man tiptoe past the medicine chest? He didn’t want to wake the sleeping pills.

The question arises—for writers, especially humor writers—what makes puns, jokes, and more sophisticated forms of humor funny?

Lydia Chilton wants to know. As I write, she’s working on her PhD in computer science at the University of Washington. Her work focuses on crowdsourcing. “In the next 10 years,” she writes, “crowdsourcing is going to change education, labor markets, information architecture, and the way we waste our time online.”

So why her interest in humor? Her video pitch posted on microryza, the crowdfunding site dedicated to finding money for scientific research, explains. View it here.

Creativity Is a Joke
According to the great creativity scholars Edward de Bono and Arthur Koestler, humor and creativity are kin. So all creative people should want to understand humor better.

All creative efforts find their way via new and unexpected paths that make surprising sense compared to the expected path. Just like a joke does. When I announce, “I just flew in from Denver,” you expect more information about my plane flight. When I continue with, “And, boy, my arms are tired!” you are surprised and delighted. You find it funny.

Immanuel Kant would say that you delight in a release of tension, because in Critique of Judgement, he wrote that “Laughter is an effect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into nothing.” Not a ton of tension in the joke above, but enough for a smile maybe.

When a work of art, an invention, or an innovation solves a challenge with a new and surprising approach, the creator almost always enjoys delight. So do those who encounter the creative solution.

By the way, microryza, the name of the crowdfunding website mentioned above, is a pun on micro and mycorrhizal networks. A play on the individually small nodes that combine to foster ecosystems. From a microryza.com representative I also learned that they are in the process of changing their name, as much as they like it, to an easier to spell and pronounce version. And that’s no joke.

See also:

Peter Lloyd hitchhiked across the United States and Canada several times in the 60s entertaining folks from Ogunquit, Maine, to Haight-Asbury with his own songs.

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