Let me try to steel-man it, then: the "egg" may be taken to refer to the "eggs laid by chickens", in which case there necessarily was a chicken before the first

Let me try to steel-man it, then: the "egg" may be taken to refer to the "eggs laid by chickens", in which case there necessarily was a chicken before the first chicken-laid egg. And that's the best I can do. But it's silly, because that interpretation of the question has an extremely obvious answer, which implies that this is _not_ the intended meaning of the question -- if the structure of the question contains the required answer, then you wouldn't bother asking that question at all. So we're right back at of course the bloody egg came first. Anyone else want to take a shot?