The general hunch was that the punchline was meant to be ironic - an anti-joke. The chicken crossed the road because he needed to get to the other side. Simple. This joke goes back at least as far as 1847, when it appeared in an edition of New York magazine The Knickerbocker. It is one of the earliest examples of a joke where the punchline isn’t actually funny. And that’s why it’s fun... https://chicken-road.gg/