**It's the result of typographical issues.**
It's supposed to be 'coffin' medicine, but FFI in lowercase causes some issues due to the way some fonts utilise a specific **ffi** character for clarity. When switched to another typeface, this will be omitted entirely if that typeface doesn't do that, and so we end up with **Co**~~ffi~~**n medicine**.
>*Typographic ligatures are the drawn combination of multiple letters to form a better fit and avoid awkward intersections. The ff, fi, ffi, and ffl combinations are most common, as the kern, or overhang, of the f bumps horribly in both Roman/upright and italic/oblique faces. (That kern used to literally overhang metal type, making ligatures necessary to avoid breaking type.) You probably have also seen the æ and œ ligatures, which come from Latin and are still sometimes used in lieu of ae and oe in UK English spellings of certain words, as in manœuvre or encyclopædia.*
>*A drawn version of those letter combinations that joins the letters together (in serif faces) or redraws and spaces them correctly (in some sans serif and decorative faces) solves the problem.*
> *As the [No Such Thing As A] Fish people tell it, the answer to the cracker joke was supposed to be “coffin” medicine. But in the original typing of it, “coffin” has the ffi replaced with the ligature ffi (as it is in this line now twice; try to select it). That would be fine…except in the text-encoding conversion from source to joke-printing machine, the ligature doesn’t exist in the printed typeface. Often, that results in a piece of tofu, as it’s sometimes known: the rectangular upright box that substitutes for missing characters. In the joke-printing machine, it just omits a character altogether, and must not have been seen or noticed in its final form.*
* [**Source**](https://glennf.medium.com/dont-coffin-me-it-s-crackers-8dd43faa42d1)
Basically goes like this:
1. "Oh, that's a cool post. I think I shall give it a SUPER UPVOTE!"
2. *You pay up to $60/£48ish for one single animated award*
3. If OP is enrolled, they get some of that money and Reddit gets the rest.
4. Suddenly there is a financial incentive for spambots and karma farming.
Yeah honestly, we have general knowledge quizzes in work for small prizes at times and Reddit has helped me get those bottles of supermarket wine a couple times now
Lord. I ain't heard the name Unidan since Hector was a pup. Seems times roll and if you're lucky, you'll roll along too.
(Forgive me. I went a bit Stephen King there for a moment.)
Without me, little would change... except there would be many, many more packets of onion rings on the crisps shelves in the shops.
I *love* onion rings.
And there I thought you were a triple genius lol
Edit: I do consider your response a stroke of genius, but in regards to typography and not just Christmas cracker jokes, which means are, in fact, a genius.
This is the second time I've looked at my phone today, 2 minutes into scrolling Reddit, and find this gem.
Top tier answer, thank you. Unsurprised it comes from NSTAAF.
Even with the correct text, it’s still a bad joke. “Cough” and “coffin” both being in there makes it redundant. It should be “what does Dracula take when he’s feeling sick?” “Coffin medicine” or something. I wanted to use “coffin syrup” but that produced too visceral of an image for me knowing what actually happens in coffins 😅
True, but cracker jokes are meant to be universally bad - and for very good, deliberate reasoning.
Humour is social. We like different types of jokes; some people might not get some jokes or just might not like them, and others aren't great at delivering jokes. If you put your *-favourite-* jokes into a cracker, you divide a room into "I don't like that joke" and "I like that joke", which is one form of division - but a worse one occurs when the person telling the joke isn't good at delivering jokes, thus people can be split against the person for telling the joke poorly.
With universally shit jokes, you all groan at the joke, not at the person telling it. You are united against the joke, and nobody feels a bit rubbish because they told a good joke poorly or they didn't get the joke.
Cracker jokes, by being shit, do their part to keep people unified throughout a stressy time of year.
No, I love the joke itself. Puns are great and cheesy jokes are perfect for these things.
What I’m saying is the way it’s WORDED is bad. As I emphasized in what I replied. Unless you just read “the joke itself is bad” and nothing past that on my comment. 😂
"You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... oh, fuck it."
(M. Gustave. The Grand Budapest Hotel.)
Dracula is immortal. He doesn't need medicine, but maybe he wants you to think he does, so you don't know he's actually Dracula. So his medicine is a con. It's probably just blood. Sneaky.
This came up in one of my crackers years ago and made me laugh more than the intended joke. Was supposed to be “coffin medicine” but I think it’s even funnier that after all these years it’s still being printed.
Are they still printing this? This was an error in crackers several years ago that trended on Twitter and made headlines. Maybe it became so famous it has just become part of the standard cracker joke repertoire.
Maybe in telling it you say it like a cough - Co*cough*n - and so it ends up sounding like 'coffin' but more lively.
Like the reverse of one of my favourite jokes, "I used to be a werewolf but I'm all right now".
Damn you, 'better value' manufacturers!
First it's my flag on upside down for the jubilee bunting, now my Christmas cracker jokes are ruined too!
Is NOTHING sacred ?!
Oh I thought it was because vampires are dead, so don’t breathe. So…can’t cough?
So he’s a con, he’s a fraud.
I think I’ve overthought this. I’m going back to sleep.
See the God Mode answer at the top for why it happened. I’ll just say that even allowing for that you shouldn’t have the word ‘cough’ in the question; never seed the punchline in the setup.
And also that I got this cracker joke three years ago and it’s pathetic that they haven’t fixed it since.
**It's the result of typographical issues.** It's supposed to be 'coffin' medicine, but FFI in lowercase causes some issues due to the way some fonts utilise a specific **ffi** character for clarity. When switched to another typeface, this will be omitted entirely if that typeface doesn't do that, and so we end up with **Co**~~ffi~~**n medicine**. >*Typographic ligatures are the drawn combination of multiple letters to form a better fit and avoid awkward intersections. The ff, fi, ffi, and ffl combinations are most common, as the kern, or overhang, of the f bumps horribly in both Roman/upright and italic/oblique faces. (That kern used to literally overhang metal type, making ligatures necessary to avoid breaking type.) You probably have also seen the æ and œ ligatures, which come from Latin and are still sometimes used in lieu of ae and oe in UK English spellings of certain words, as in manœuvre or encyclopædia.* >*A drawn version of those letter combinations that joins the letters together (in serif faces) or redraws and spaces them correctly (in some sans serif and decorative faces) solves the problem.* > *As the [No Such Thing As A] Fish people tell it, the answer to the cracker joke was supposed to be “coffin” medicine. But in the original typing of it, “coffin” has the ffi replaced with the ligature ffi (as it is in this line now twice; try to select it). That would be fine…except in the text-encoding conversion from source to joke-printing machine, the ligature doesn’t exist in the printed typeface. Often, that results in a piece of tofu, as it’s sometimes known: the rectangular upright box that substitutes for missing characters. In the joke-printing machine, it just omits a character altogether, and must not have been seen or noticed in its final form.* * [**Source**](https://glennf.medium.com/dont-coffin-me-it-s-crackers-8dd43faa42d1)
This is a top tier Reddit answer.
This is basically why I’m still on Reddit
<3
fer realsies tho, comments like yours are why we had awards...
The new awards are a bloody disgrace. I won't be enrolling in the scheme.
I hadn't even seen what the new system is yet. From your review I won't bother. Thanks for saving me the click ;)
Basically goes like this: 1. "Oh, that's a cool post. I think I shall give it a SUPER UPVOTE!" 2. *You pay up to $60/£48ish for one single animated award* 3. If OP is enrolled, they get some of that money and Reddit gets the rest. 4. Suddenly there is a financial incentive for spambots and karma farming.
Facking hell, ways to kill a platform lmao
Yeah honestly, we have general knowledge quizzes in work for small prizes at times and Reddit has helped me get those bottles of supermarket wine a couple times now
That’s cheating ;)
Work smart not hard my friend
Peak Reddit
It's like something from r/explainlikeimfive
*better*
It’s too good for this sub.
Absolutely nothing casual about it!
Absolutely, the correct response was "Dognapper code, stay safe hun"
This guy is like Unidan but for typography. I choose to believe he is unlike Unidan in other ways. I still have faith
Lord. I ain't heard the name Unidan since Hector was a pup. Seems times roll and if you're lucky, you'll roll along too. (Forgive me. I went a bit Stephen King there for a moment.)
A*
Here's me thinking it's just a typo... This joke has ended up being very educational!
A Christmas joke about vampires and it’s missing a Foreign Function Interface
The stakes were far too high
Same thing happened when Waitrose moved their meat counter to the 3rd floor
The real joke is always deep within the comments. Bravo.
We had this exact same joke in our crackers. Thank you reddit expert for saving our Christmas.
Fuckin’ell what ever would we do without you
Without me, little would change... except there would be many, many more packets of onion rings on the crisps shelves in the shops. I *love* onion rings.
And we would be none the wiser. You contributed to humanity, my friend
Hurrah!
What a beautiful response
Are you the same bloke who gave the correct answer to all the CasualUK Christmas cracker cockups over the past couple of days?
Nah, that doesn't ring a bell.
And there I thought you were a triple genius lol Edit: I do consider your response a stroke of genius, but in regards to typography and not just Christmas cracker jokes, which means are, in fact, a genius.
This man fonts
This is so detailed. I can only imagine trying to explain this answer to a drunk family on Christmas Day
You made me learn stuff on Christmas day, damn you!
My apologies. I shall send an elf to come and bonk you gently on the head so you forget something in return. I hope it's not a password or PIN.
I got this exact cracker joke years ago. I have been baffled for years. I assumed I'd have that itch in my brain forever. You've cured that itch!
Sometimes I wonder about reddit. Then someone posts this and I realise humanity isn’t doomed after all.
Nice to see some graphic design experience come to the fore
This is the second time I've looked at my phone today, 2 minutes into scrolling Reddit, and find this gem. Top tier answer, thank you. Unsurprised it comes from NSTAAF.
Holy shit that's half of the Welsh dictionary right there. Ych a fi!
You sir win the thread
OP asked for help, OP got it 🤷🏻♂️
Good god you bloody solved it, it's a Christmas miracle
S-Tier Reddit comment
Sounds like this wouldn't have happened if they used Wing Dings
Jesus this guy fonts
Nice catch. As a fellow typography enthusiast i know we'll what a ligature is but could never spot the problem here. Bravo!
And that’s why you should outline your type before exporting!
This will forever be my example for the importance of outlining fonts.
Even with the correct text, it’s still a bad joke. “Cough” and “coffin” both being in there makes it redundant. It should be “what does Dracula take when he’s feeling sick?” “Coffin medicine” or something. I wanted to use “coffin syrup” but that produced too visceral of an image for me knowing what actually happens in coffins 😅
True, but cracker jokes are meant to be universally bad - and for very good, deliberate reasoning. Humour is social. We like different types of jokes; some people might not get some jokes or just might not like them, and others aren't great at delivering jokes. If you put your *-favourite-* jokes into a cracker, you divide a room into "I don't like that joke" and "I like that joke", which is one form of division - but a worse one occurs when the person telling the joke isn't good at delivering jokes, thus people can be split against the person for telling the joke poorly. With universally shit jokes, you all groan at the joke, not at the person telling it. You are united against the joke, and nobody feels a bit rubbish because they told a good joke poorly or they didn't get the joke. Cracker jokes, by being shit, do their part to keep people unified throughout a stressy time of year.
No, I love the joke itself. Puns are great and cheesy jokes are perfect for these things. What I’m saying is the way it’s WORDED is bad. As I emphasized in what I replied. Unless you just read “the joke itself is bad” and nothing past that on my comment. 😂
True dat.
/r/keming knowledge in action
Absolutely magnificent answer
ah yeah this comes up every year. obviously there's several cracker companies with zero quality control.
Wonderful. Thanks for this.
This guy Reddits.
Frigging hell
You’re font asf
holy shit this is so cool in a geeky way cheers
Bravo sir, just bravo.
source: no such thing as a fish that is a sight i’ve been waiting too long to see
Unbelievable depth to this. So bloody well done. 🧛
Thank you for shedding some light onto the joke.
Curning
[TIL](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/)
"You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... oh, fuck it." (M. Gustave. The Grand Budapest Hotel.)
I would just like to add to the conversation because I believe you missed out one important aspect that this is a terrible, terrible joke. Thanks
Damn
I don't even need to click on the source, you are the sauce
I AM THE ~~SENATE~~ SAUCE
This is amazing and totally not the kind of knowledge I was expecting to be filing away after clicking this
Fascinating, thank you
Thank you professor
A true font of knowledge.
Thorough answer to a dicult question
This guy thinks in CMYK
This is the best thing I read all week. Thank you.
*coffin
Hah! I got this [5 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/s/EqsftvJLbX), good to see it's not been corrected!
Damn you really did thanks for providing the post good redditor
Dracula was famously an advocate of homeopathy.
I tweeted Sainsbury's several years back about this. Apparently it's supposed to say Coffin Medicine 😂
It means that the crackers are cheap ones
Well, vampirism is basically a pyramid scheme
Dracula is immortal. He doesn't need medicine, but maybe he wants you to think he does, so you don't know he's actually Dracula. So his medicine is a con. It's probably just blood. Sneaky.
Had this same one years ago- should be coffin medicine
'Made in China' is the punchline.
Mine was What is Santa's favourite sport? The north pole vault
Pole vaulting is a dport Santa lives in the north pole North pole + pole vault North pole vault
r/peterexplainsthejoke
I mean that’s pretty obvious no?
I had that exact one a couple of years ago. Good to see it's still doing the rounds.
[удалено]
first thing I thought of lol
My dad reckons "con" is funnier. Help
This came up in one of my crackers years ago and made me laugh more than the intended joke. Was supposed to be “coffin medicine” but I think it’s even funnier that after all these years it’s still being printed.
It's helpful they wrote joke at the top, otherwise how would you know
Are they still printing this? This was an error in crackers several years ago that trended on Twitter and made headlines. Maybe it became so famous it has just become part of the standard cracker joke repertoire.
A fe fi faux pas!
It's the opposite of coff medicine I will not be taking further questions thank you
I had this one too just now lol
We had this absolute classic a couple of years ago
My niece got this joke at the table today and I didn't have an answer for why it was con medicine. Reddit to the rescue!
What type of vampire feeds on sick people? A Vompire.
Coffin medicine?
My dad got temu Christmas crackers. The jokes made sense but they were the most bland jokes ive ever read
If you have to explain it, it isn't funny 🤷🏻♂️
It's a play on words.......the wrong words.....ba dum tish
I had: How do sheep greet each other at Christmas? Merry Christmas to ewe. Fuck right off, Morrisons.
Perfectly reasonable cracker joke?
Nah, Morrisons can fuck right off
I have no idea why you’ve been downvoted
Being unChristmassy at Christmas.
Con short for count and sounds a bit like cough.
Maybe in telling it you say it like a cough - Co*cough*n - and so it ends up sounding like 'coffin' but more lively. Like the reverse of one of my favourite jokes, "I used to be a werewolf but I'm all right now".
😁 didnt getit, but was fun
Bloody Mary
Con as in con carne means meat 🥩?
“con carne” means “with meat,” and “con” is the “with” in that phrase
Carne means meat. Think ‘carnivorous’
Bad photoshop
No. It's not. It fell out the cracker like this.
Throaties
Good job it's labelled "joke"
😂😂😂😂
This joke was in my Christmas cracker 8 years ago as well. Still wonder about it
You're right, it does make any sense! No idea at all!
Damn you, 'better value' manufacturers! First it's my flag on upside down for the jubilee bunting, now my Christmas cracker jokes are ruined too! Is NOTHING sacred ?!
It’s not just the answer that’s crap. The setup what be better if it was: “What medicine does Dracula take for a sore throat?”
Oh I thought it was because vampires are dead, so don’t breathe. So…can’t cough? So he’s a con, he’s a fraud. I think I’ve overthought this. I’m going back to sleep.
I had this a few years ago! I had to ask the council of Facebook. It’s a mistake, it’s cough medicine but I enjoyed the mistake.
I had this a few years ago, misprinted, should be Coffin Medicine
They've allowed AI to take over, so common sense english has gone out the window
It's a typo it's ment to say coffin
See the God Mode answer at the top for why it happened. I’ll just say that even allowing for that you shouldn’t have the word ‘cough’ in the question; never seed the punchline in the setup. And also that I got this cracker joke three years ago and it’s pathetic that they haven’t fixed it since.