I got much better answers with this prompt: “ Jokes are funny precisely because they play on knowledge on two poles: (i) at first listen, they’re surprising, and (ii) upon review, they’re obvious.

Let’s think through many many options to answer this joke that only focus on surprising the listener in section 1. And in section 2 we’ll focus on finding/filtering for the ones that are obvious in hindsight.

“Why did the sun climb a tree?”

In this case, let’s note that the sun doesn’t climb anything, so there’s two meanings at play here: one is that the sun’s light seems to climb up the tree, and the other is an anthropomorphization of the sun climbing the tree like an animal. So, to be funny, the joke should play on the second meaning as a surprise, but have the first meaning as answer with an obviousness to it. Or vice versa.”

Here’s a descent ones: - to leaf the ground behind - because it heard the leaves were throwing shade