Talk about worlds colliding: Imagine what would happen if a Hollywood comedy writer started thinking up questions for the SAT.

That’s what’s happening, sort of, with Charles Horn, a writer whose work has appeared in the cartoon series “Robot Chicken” and on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

Horn saw a niche in the rapidly expanding and extremely lucrative test prep industry and decided to fill it with “The Laugh Out Loud Guide” to the SAT.

“In the real test,” he said, “part of what makes it so hard is that it’s sooo boring.” Students “can’t even get into it, because they have to read it over and over and over again.”

At first blush, the idea of trying to find comedy in the extremely unfunny business of studying for the college entrance exam would appear to be a losing proposition. Horn has a three-word response: comedy traffic school.

“Research shows that comedy is actually effective in education,” he said in an interview near his Los Angeles home. “It increases recall … it reduces stress … and it actually makes the subjects more interesting.”

Horn, who described himself as being in his 30s, grew up in Canada, where students didn’t routinely take the SAT. He said he eventually took the graduate school version, the GRE, and wound up earning a Ph.D. from Princeton before going to work as a software engineer for a small firm in the Silicon Valley. Beneath the engineer’s facade, a comedy writer was lurking, and a few years ago, he chucked a regular paycheck, moved to Los Angeles and tried his hand at making people laugh.

The result was the age-old Hollywood success story: Desperate for paying work, he needed a real job. He resorted to tutoring high school students for the SAT.

It was only a matter of time before he wrote a book combining the various threads of his careers.

High schoolers unimpressed, at first

So is it funny? The Los Angeles Times convened an expert panel: seven Los Angeles Fairfax High School seniors who have all studied for, and taken, the SAT.

Tough crowd.

“It seems like a regular SAT, except it throws in a little kiddie joke,” said Luigi Oliva, 17, after hearing one question selected from the book at random. “Immature,” he concluded.

“They’re funny in a kindergarten way,” said classmate Melissa Umana, 18, “not for people who are taking the SAT.”

But then the students began reading and re-evaluating. “I wouldn’t mind using the book,” decided Jeanette Becerril, 17, “because even though it’s a little immature, the test is so serious and so stressful that … when you use a book like this, it calms you down a little bit.”

Norma Hernandez, 17, spoke up. “I think you’ll remember something like this better than something that’s like everything else,” she said.

Still, the students had quibbles. Once you get past the jokey setups, they concluded, math is math. But English is another matter. Luigi read aloud an essay that begins: “Ladies and Gentlemen, today we have lost a most righteous and gnarly dude, taken from us way too soon. The Toddmeister is, simply put, the most heinous, (expletive), wicked-cool person on the face of the planet.”

Melissa laughed, but said: “That’s not going to be on the SAT, for sure. This is about some dude who parties. How’s that going to help me?”

Fair enough, Horn said, when told of the students’ reaction. In fact, his book contains a disclaimer that says: “What are the chances that you’ll see a sentence about the Toddmeister on the real SAT exam? Pretty much zero.” But, it says, the writing portions of the book still give students the opportunity to practice on humorous material — parts of which do have more challenging vocabulary, and contain common errors that test-takers will be asked to spot. Then, it says, they’ll be ready for the real, “retardedly boring” thing.

For the record, College Board spokeswoman Alana Klein took a pass when asked if she found her company’s test to be “retardedly boring.” “Do you think it is?” she asked. “I’m not sure I even know what that means.”

She added that the official policy of the College Board is that “the best way to get ready for the SAT is for kids to take a rigorous curriculum in high school … and essentially just be a good student. … That’s our stance.”

Sample questions

1: At a Saks Fifth Avenue store, Winona Ryder examines four distinct blouses, five distinct dresses, and two distinct handbags. How many different combinations of items can she shoplift if she takes exactly one blouse, two dresses and a handbag?

2: Yo mamma so _________, when you mail her a letter, you need two zip codes. A) diaphenous. B) luminous. C) ravenous. D) grisly. E.) corpulent.

3: If Rosie O’Donnell can eat a 20-pound turkey in 12 minutes, how many minutes would it take her, at that rate, to eat a 30-pound ham? A) 8. B) 12. C) 16. D) 18. E) 20.

4: On a scale of 1 to 10, Warren’s hotness can be expressed as A times the square root of B, where A and B are positive integers and A is greater than B. If Warren’s hotness is equal to 2 times the square root of 12, what is the value of A minus B? A) -10. B) -1 C) 0 D) 1 E) 10.

5: After a ________ investigation, the inspector _______ that faulty wiring was fo’ shizzle the cause of the fire that burned down Snoop Dogg’s hizzhouse. A) lengthy, realized. B) complete, prognosticated. C) cursory, ruled. D) thorough, determined. E) copious, charged.

Answers: 1-80; 2-E; 3-D; 4-D; 5-D