Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

Two people are looking into a doorway at an empty room containing only a table with a complete set of Martin Gardner puzzles. One person explains the setup: the nearest water is all the way down the hall, the mathematicians just wander in, "and... that's it." The caption at the bottom reads: "We discovered a way to humanely euthanize mathematicians."

The implication is that mathematicians are so irresistibly drawn to puzzles that they will enter the room, become completely absorbed in the Martin Gardner puzzle collection, and simply never leave -- not even to get water. They will work on the puzzles until they die of dehydration, and they will do so happily. This is presented as a "humane" method because the mathematicians enjoy every moment of it.

The Humor

The joke works on the dark comedy of treating mathematicians like an animal species that needs to be managed, complete with the bureaucratic euphemism of "humane euthanization." The setup mirrors how one might describe a humane trap for rodents -- a simple lure in an enclosed space. The specific detail that water is "all the way down the hall" (not absent, just inconveniently far) makes it funnier because it suggests the mathematicians technically could save themselves, but they simply will not prioritize survival over puzzles. The ellipsis in "and... that's it" conveys a mix of guilt and amazement that something so simple works so well.

References

Martin Gardner (1914-2010) was a renowned American mathematics and science writer best known for his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American, which he wrote for 25 years (1956-1981). His puzzles and recreational mathematics problems are legendary in the math community for being deceptively engaging and addictive. Gardner published over 100 books and is widely credited with inspiring a love of mathematics in countless readers. The joke that his puzzles could literally trap mathematicians to the point of death is an affectionate exaggeration of his work's genuinely captivating quality.