The riddle
I Can Be Cracked, Made, Told and Played. What Am I?
Four verbs, one noun
Each verb is a normal partner for joke. To crack a joke is to tell it, and Wiktionary lists exactly that sense of crack. To make a joke is to produce one, and to tell a joke is to say it to listeners. To play a joke on someone is to trick them in fun. Every verb fits the answer on its own, and the riddle is solved only because all four fit at once.
Why the other guesses fail
Cracked suggests an egg, a nut, a safe or a code, and a code can also be made. Few other things are cracked, made, told and played all at once. That is how the riddle narrows its target: the first clue is loose and each later clue closes another door. The egg guess has a riddle of its own at why don't eggs tell jokes.
An old word
Wiktionary traces joke to the Latin iocus, meaning joke, jest or pastime, a word that goes back to a root meaning to speak or utter. Jokes themselves are older than the word: Wikipedia calls the Greek-language Philogelos, whose title means Love of Laughter, the oldest surviving collection of jokes. Its exact date is unknown, and its English translator suggests it may date from the fourth century AD.
Trying a fifth verb
Ask a group to add one more verb that works for a joke, such as share or get. The answers show how many verbs English attaches to the same noun. Each one changes how the joke is handled.