The Worst Pun Ever?

I once came upon a question on Quora asking for the worst pun ever written. Right up my alley! So I dug out an old post that I remembered one of my good friends had tagged me in on Facebook, and posted it as my answer. The amount of thought someone put into this piece of utter viciousness is amazing! I really really wish to meet the one brilliant guy (or girl) who came up with this!

There were once 3 kingdoms that bordered the same lake. In the middle of the lake there was an island, and the 3 kingdoms had been fighting over it for years. No one seemed to be able to keep the upper hand for very long and no one had been victorious. The wars over this little island were very costly, but all 3 kingdoms wanted it because of its great beauty and resources.

Finally, the monarchs agreed to a way to settle the matter permanently. Each would send their knights and squires to the island and they would fight it out. Whoever’s knights and squires won the day would keep the island forever.

One kingdom sent many knights and each knight had a few squires. The night before the battle, the knights polished their armor while the squires readied the weapons. When the armor was finished, the knights sat around the fire drinking.

The second kingdom sent more knights than the first and each knight had several squires. The night before the battle, the knights drank around the fire while the squires scurried about polishing armor and readying weapons.

The third kingdom only sent one knight and he had only one squire. While the squire polished armor and readied the weapons, the knight hung a single pot from the tallest branch of the tree and tied a rope with a loop at the end from another branch. Then the knight sat by the fire and drank while the squire kept working.

The fateful day came and all the squires came out to the battlefield. (The knights had stayed up too long drinking.) The battle was fierce. In the end, only the lone squire from the third kingdom was left standing. Proving once again, the age old theorem:

The squire of the high pot and noose is equal to the sum of the squires of the other two sides.

Update: Apparently this deathly pun first appeared in the ‘The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets’ written by Simon Singh and published by Bloomsbury.