How to keep an idiot busy for hours

How to keep an idiot busy for hours is a joke which implicates the listener in circular reasoning or action in an attempt to find out how to keep an idiot busy for hours. The implication is that the listener is an idiot. The joke can take many forms, including questions with no possible answer or activities with no apparent conclusion or objective.

Examples of the joke

• A small card with "If you'd like to know how to keep an idiot busy for hours, turn this card over" printed on both sides.
• A riddle:

Q: How do you keep an idiot in suspense?

A: I'll tell you tomorrow!

• A riddle:

Q: How do you keep an idiot busy?

A: Have him read this.

• Another example

Q: How do you keep an idiot busy for hours?

A: put them in a circular room and tell them to sit in a corner.

• Another example:

Q: How do you keep an idiot busy? (Read the bottom)

Q: How do you keep an idiot busy? (Read the top)

Variations

The joke has been adapted on the Internet with a number of pages saying "If you'd like to know how to keep an idiot busy for hours, click here." The "Click here" would normally reference back to the article the user was reading. Another variation on this joke is "How to keep a blonde busy for hours", employing the same technique. This variation is a blonde joke. A similar trick appears in Bart Simpson's Guide to Life, where the reader is told in various ways to turn to a certain page to find the meaning of life. When they get to that page, there is simply another page given as containing the meaning of life. Readers find themselves back at the beginning after going through about a dozen pages.

HumorHotlines.com operates a free hotline that uses the Keep An Idiot Busy concept. The caller is told they're being instructed on how to entertain an idiot for a minute. At the end of the call they are informed that if they are still listening, they have successfully kept an idiot entertained for a minute, thus becoming the target of the prank.

A more intelligent victim may fall afoul of the further trick "How to keep a genius busy for hours", a similar act of subtle deceit which involves appealing to the victim's sense of reason to force their attention, often taking the form of a logical contradiction. A related example to the "idiot" form above comprises a small card with "The statement on the other side of this card is true" printed on one side and "The statement on the other side of this card is false." This is a variation of the Liar paradox.

If we let A be the first statement and B be the second, then we can write the two statements as follows:

$\begin{matrix} \Alpha & \leftrightarrow & \Beta \\ \Beta & \leftrightarrow & \neg \Alpha \end{matrix}$

Clearly, the two statements contradict, but nevertheless, the "genius" has an urge to try to figure out which of the two statements (if any) is true.

See also

• The Song That Never Ends

References

• p. 12, Perplexing Puzzles and Tantalizing Teasers, Martin Gardner, Dover, 1988. ISBN 0486256375.