It’s all in the timing… Nick had the most amazing sense of humor, and he delighted in crafting intricate "plays on words." It was not just the brilliant puns, though, that made him so funny. It was his delight in engineering the timing in his humor like everything else he did -- with the precision of fine automobile. Nick’s favorite part of the joke was when his “mark” (the unknowing “straight-man” to Nick’s humor) would look at him puzzled and ask the question Nick was waiting for (i.e., "What do you mean this is a Dog Road?"...) He would smile this huge grin (and you know he was thinking inside, "Wait for it...just a little closer..." and POW, he would say in his "loud" voice, "RUFF!" And he got you. Not for the last time. The rite of initiation into Nick’s world… If you knew Nick for more than 5 minutes, you generally became one of his “marks” pretty quickly. Some guys hum when they work…Nick works out puns and tricks you into participating by crafting elaborate schemes to get you to ask him the “magic question”. And no matter how well you thought you knew his tricks, he would get you again. And if you were in a group of his friends who knew his regular “bits”, it became a fantastic spectator sport to watch him set up the "newbie" in the group, carefully setting up the bit so that the timing of the humor was perfect. The best example of this was Nick's bit "Yogesh is as good as mine." In his book of tricks, I think this was Nicks favorite because of how long he spent setting up the original “mark” for this joke. Here’s how it went: there was a new engineer named “Yogesh Wagle” working with Nick and his team on a project a number of years back, and Nick quickly developed the pun, "Yogesh (Your guess) is as good as mine..." However, just simply throwing the pun out there was not good enough for Nick (of course...) Bigger… Funnier… More complex…the “Truman Show” of puns So, Nick set up this elaborate scenario where he ensured Yogesh was not available to provide information that was very crucial to the project, and amped up the intensity just right so his "mark" got extremely exasperated at Yogesh’s absence, and yelled, "Where is Wagle?!!! " And of course, all of Nick's team watched in hysterical anticipation as Nick's smile got bigger and bigger, and Nick looked over, above his glasses, and delivered the punch line, "Yogesh is as good as mine!!!!!" Those who were there laughed until they cried, with the "mark" still not quite sure how Nick had tricked him into the lead role in “Nick Sorrentino's version of the Truman Show”.