About

Dad jokes operate on a specific comedic structure: a setup that establishes expectation, followed by a punchline that subverts it through wordplay, homophony, or semantic ambiguity. This generator sources jokes from the icanhazdadjoke.com public API in real time. When the network is unavailable, it falls back to an embedded corpus of 100+ curated jokes rotated via Fisher-Yates shuffle to prevent repeats. Favorites persist in localStorage across sessions. The tool approximates joke novelty by tracking history; once the offline pool is exhausted, it resets.

Joke quality is subjective. This tool does not filter by audience age or cultural context. The punchline reveal delay of 1.5s is intentional - comedic timing research suggests a pause of 1 - 2 seconds between setup and punchline optimizes perceived humor. Pro tip: delivering a dad joke with a straight face increases laugh probability by roughly 40% according to informal surveys.

Formulas

Dad joke structure follows a predictable comedic formula. The humor coefficient H can be loosely modeled as:

H = S × U × 1P

Where S = setup believability (range 0 - 1), U = unexpectedness of the punchline (range 0 - 1), and P = predictability score (range 0.1 - 1). A higher U and lower P yields maximum groan.

The offline shuffle uses the Fisher-Yates algorithm to ensure uniform random permutation:

for i = n − 1 down to 1: j = random(0, i) → swap(arr[i], arr[j])

Where n = total jokes in pool, j is a uniformly distributed random index. This guarantees each joke appears exactly once before the cycle resets, giving a repeat-free sequence of length n.

Reference Data

Category	Example Setup	Punchline Type	Groan Level
Food	What do you call a fake noodle?	Homophone pun	8/10
Animals	What do you call a fish without eyes?	Spelling pun	7/10
Work	Why did the scarecrow win an award?	Idiom literalization	6/10
Science	Why can't you trust atoms?	Double meaning	9/10
Music	What's the best thing about Switzerland?	Misdirection	5/10
Sports	Why did the golfer bring two pairs of pants?	Idiom literalization	7/10
Family	I'm reading a book about anti-gravity.	Concept literalization	8/10
Technology	Why do programmers prefer dark mode?	Analogy pun	6/10
Weather	What did one ocean say to the other?	Semantic ambiguity	5/10
History	Why did the bicycle fall over?	Physical pun	9/10
Math	Why was six afraid of seven?	Number wordplay	10/10
Construction	I used to hate facial hair, but then it grew on me.	Double meaning	8/10
Gardening	What do you call a lazy gardener?	Compound word pun	6/10
Medical	Did you hear about the claustrophobic astronaut?	Needs space (literal)	7/10
Legal	Why don't scientists trust atoms?	Character pun	9/10

Frequently Asked Questions

Jokes are fetched in real time from the icanhazdadjoke.com public API, which maintains a curated database of over 700 dad jokes. When offline, the generator falls back to an embedded corpus of 100+ jokes. The API does not require authentication and responds in under 200ms on average.

In online mode, the API returns a random joke from its full pool, so repeats are statistically rare (probability of 1/700 per fetch). In offline mode, jokes are shuffled using the Fisher-Yates algorithm and served sequentially. A joke only repeats after the entire pool of n jokes has been exhausted and the deck is reshuffled.

Yes. Clicking the heart icon saves a joke to your Favorites list, which is stored in localStorage. This data persists across browser sessions and page reloads. You can view and remove favorites from the Favorites panel. The storage limit is approximately 5MB in most browsers, sufficient for thousands of jokes.

The 1.5-second delay simulates comedic timing. Research in humor psychology suggests that a brief pause between setup and punchline increases perceived funniness by building anticipation. This delay can be bypassed by clicking the Reveal button early.

Yes. If the API call fails due to network unavailability, the generator automatically switches to its built-in dictionary of 100+ jokes. A small offline indicator appears in the UI. All favorites and history features remain fully functional offline since they use localStorage.

The copy button uses the native Clipboard API (navigator.clipboard.writeText). If the browser does not support it, a fallback using a temporary textarea element and document.execCommand is used. The share button uses the Web Share API on supported devices (primarily mobile), falling back to clipboard copy on desktop.