The funniest humor examples have many facets. They aren’t well suited for illustrating individual humor components like the resonance strength portion of kernel quality. The best examples for illustration are simple ones stripped of complexity and nuance.

Q. What kind of key can't open a lock?
A. A mon-key.

Here the unstated sense element is the word monkey. In the nonsense of ‘mon-key’, the first syllable is treated as a modifier for the second. The humor kernel is the clash or mental superposition of these two.

The words ‘key’ and ‘monkey’ are very familiar. Similar punchlines like don-key or tur-key would have a roughly equal resonance strength for most observers. The resonance strength would be weaker (and therefore less funny overall) with a less familiar punchline like ‘lac-key’.

Within humor kernels, resonance tends to be similar for both of the clashing elements. But there are plenty of cases where for an individual observer the resonance is sharply different between the two.

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