Dad jokes
St. Patrick's Day
15 jokes, all of them clean
St. Patrick's Day puns run on a small pile of words — luck, green, clover, gold, leprechaun — and almost all of them fold neatly in half. Sham-rock is doing 2 jobs before anybody adds anything.
What do you call a fake Irish stone? A sham-rock.
Why shouldn't you iron a four-leaf clover? You don't want to press your luck.
What do leprechauns love to barbecue? Short ribs.
How did the leprechaun win the race? He took a shortcut.
What's Irish and stays out all night? Paddy O'Furniture.
Why do leprechauns hate running? They're always a wee bit short of breath.
What do you get when you cross poison ivy with a four-leaf clover? A rash of good luck.
Why did the leprechaun turn down the soup? He already had a pot of gold.
How is a best friend like a four-leaf clover? Hard to find and lucky to have.
Why can't you borrow money from a leprechaun? They're always a little short.
What kind of music do leprechauns love? Sham-rock and roll.
Why did the leprechaun stand on the potato? To keep from falling in the stew.
What's a leprechaun's favorite cereal? Lucky Charms, obviously.
When is an Irish potato not Irish? When it's a French fry.
What do you call an Irish spider? Paddy long legs.
A short word list, worked hard
This holiday has maybe 8 associated nouns, which sounds like a limitation and is actually the point. A pun needs the listener to arrive at the second meaning fast, and a small vocabulary means they get there. Everybody hears clover and thinks luck within a beat. Compare that to a holiday with 40 associated things, where you have to spend the setup narrowing it down.
Keep it to the stones and the clovers
The clean lane for this holiday is the imagery, not the drinking. Every joke here stays on rocks, plants, rainbows and short leprechauns, which means they work in a classroom, on a work chat, and on a card. The press-your-luck one is the pick of the page — it is the only one that needs a second to arrive.
The one to actually use
Ironing the four-leaf clover. It is the only joke on this page with 2 layers — pressing is literally what an iron does, and pressing your luck is an idiom that means exactly what the joke is warning against. Everything else here is a single sound-alike. Sham-rock is the more famous one and it is a weaker joke, because you see it coming from the first syllable.
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