The one you describe is a classic format: someone has a problem, then through accidental, unrelated circumstances, solves it. They meet someone else with the same problem, and the punchline is that their advice is "have you tried..?"
> A pedant having fallen into a pit called out continually to summon help. When no one answered, he said to himself, “I am a fool if I do not give all a beating when I get out in order that in the future they shall answer me and furnish me with a ladder.”
The author ends being unsure their strategy is sound -- but the point of the joke is that it's clearly not sound, and one that would only make sense to a pedant.
> "Another person who was going away wrote to a pedant that he should buy him some books. But he regarded the request lightly and said to him on his return, “I did not receive your letter which you sent concerning the books.”"
The punchline is that the pedant clearly received the letter, or he wouldn't know to say that the he's claiming to have not received concerned books. Today it might be: "Hey, did you get my text message?" "The one asking if you could borrow my car? No, I didn't."
Indeed, that's what's going on in Pohl's "The Day After The Day The Martians Came".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After_the_Day_the_Mart...
Ordinary people are telling ordinary in-group jokes... but now they're about Martians. The joke is invariably that Martians are stupid, dirty, uncivilised etc. One of these people observes to his (we infer black) employee that the discovery of Martian life won't make any "difference to anybody". The employee politely disagrees, pointing out that it already made "a damn big difference to me".
Pohl wrote that in 1960s America.
> It just a critique of people doing something supposedly to help with a situation, that actually has zero returns. (the guy couldn't fit in his clothes, so he shaved his body hair - as if that would make much of dent to his body volume).
I understood this joke differently: You're supposed to pull the breeches to get into them, but the guy pulled his hair instead.
What the author doesn't get is that those are meant not just as ha-ha jokes, but also as ironic comments on behavior. E.g., his example on this category:
"A pedant was looking for his book for many days but could not find it. By chance as he was eating lettuce and turned a certain corner he saw the book lying there. Later meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said, “Do not worry but buy some lettuces and eat them at the corner, when you turn it and go a little ways you fill find it.”
This is an ironic remark on how people think what worked for them circumstancially, it will work for others, even in another situation. E.g. this joke could be used almost verbatim as a ironic critique of modern-day cargo cult of success (where copying BS circumstancial things a rich person does, like "waking up at 6am" or "only eat Soylent to save time") is supposed to be how you find success.
Or take:
"Another person who was going away wrote to a pedant that he should buy him some books. But he regarded the request lightly and said to him on his return, “I did not receive your letter which you sent concerning the books.”"
The joke here is not about "someone saying something dump", but rather poking fun at "the check is in the post" kind of behavior.
Moving on: "Cumaeans are stupid. I’m not sure what the Cumaeans did to deserve this, but there’s a whole section with jokes like this"
The point is not Cumaeans, and those kind of jokes at some group (from the Polish to rednecks) are a staple all across the world - including by those groups made fun of themselves.
Or one he is confused about, which is perfectly clear:
"A pedant had purchased a pair of breeches and since they were very tight and he had difficulty in getting into them, he pulled all the hair off himself."
It just a critique of people doing something supposedly to help with a situation, that actually has zero returns. (the guy couldn't fit in his clothes, so he shaved his body hair - as if that would make much of dent to his body volume).
One can see that there are tons of examples of this behavior in modern life (and, alas, in programming).
The author says he is especially confused about this joke, but the meaning is, once again, totally clear:
"A shrewd fellow whilst wrestling fell into the mud and in order that he might not seem to be clumsy, he got up entirely covered with mud and stood conceitedly through the whole contest."
It's again poking fun at the well known "save face" behavior, that if you accidently fail at something, you can try make it appear like you didn't fail, but rather intended what happened. There are like 100 examples of the same exact behavior in modern comedy movies.
In essense, the author appears to take the jokes too literaly or as actual advice, fails to see their point, and in general appears to be quite the ...pedant, like the butt of some of those jokes!