‘How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?’: We interrupt this program to bring you Stephen King’s latest dad joke

Stephen King is many things; an obscenely famous horror author, politically outspoken, good at recommending films (with some major exceptions), a Baby Reindeer enthusiast, and, generally speaking, a voice that tends to reach many ears.

But King is also a father of three, meaning that there have been three separate instances where King’s dad joke muscle reached a new level of power. This is intimidating just on its own, but what a lot of people don’t know about dad jokes is that they become even stronger if it’s a joke that everyone’s already heard before; the power of the dad joke lies precisely in its corny irony, so unknowingly(?) recycling a joke very much helps the craft’s reputation.

Here, King indulges in a widely-circulated dad joke wherein “ten tickles” serves as the punchline to “How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?” The joke, of course, is that the punchline is a play on “tentacles,” which octopi possess. The joke is made even better by the fact that octopi have eight arms rather than ten (scientifically speaking, there’s a difference between arms and tentacles, but we’re here to dissect dad jokes, not cephalopods).

What King may not have realized, however, is that historical dad jokes uttered by a Level Three Dad release a certain pheromone into the air that attracts other dads to its location. Upon witnessing it, the affected dads will be compelled to toss their own coagulations of cringe into the mix; this phenomenon is colloquially known as an “HOA barbeque.”

Indeed, Stephen King may not be known for building decks or being a staunch proponent of red meat, but every dad has their method for filling their fatherhood quotient; for King, it’s jokes about a hypothetical octopus.